


Sea-Swallowed

by Theinfiniteyet



Category: Glee
Genre: Hawaii, M/M, Nationals, Surfing, shark attack, soul surfer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-29
Updated: 2014-07-30
Packaged: 2017-12-30 20:22:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 27,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1022985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theinfiniteyet/pseuds/Theinfiniteyet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompted by Coolgleekazoid - loosely based around the plot of Soul Surfer.</p><p>During the New Directions trip to nationals in Hawaii, Blaine Anderson's suffers a near fatal attack from a shark, while surfing. He survives having lost only his arm and his love of water. Now, Kurt and Blaine and their friends and family must pick up the pieces from the trauma and try to live properly again.</p><p>(Here Blaine, Sam and Artie are Seniors with the others and will be graduating this year)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

_“All that glitters is not gold,_

_often have you heard that told”_

_Mine is all the glittering sea,_

_waves of gold engulfing me,_

_in the depths all shadows dark,_

_they do not offer a warning bark,_

_Have you ever sung to the ocean?_

_and walked waters with a board?_

_For the tide’s ears are always open,_

_as long as it’s pits are clawed._

Puck is the first to let out a yelp of enthusiasm and the cheers follow. In the midst of it Blaine nudges into Kurt, pressing their knees together and grinning, imagining how the sparkling waves would look against Kurt’s pale skin and aquatic eyes. Hawaii. He thinks. Sun, singing, winning competitions and freckles across his boyfriend’s back.

“And the theme,” Mr Shue drum-rolls along the piano to Brad’s chagrin, “Is Water!”

“Can we bring back the syncro routine?” Sam asks.

Kurt feels a tightening in his chest at the reminder of the water-flushed Blaine from Mr Shue’s proposal, beautiful and blushed in red as he walked across the water.

“We will be performing on land unfortunately,” Mr Shue continues, “But as long as your parents give permission there will be more than enough time for swimming, surfing and sunbathing. We will need some parent volunteers, however.”

“Mine and Finn’s would be happy to help I’m sure,” Kurt interrupts, raising his hand. Finn’s head falls into his hands but good-naturedly. Despite dismissing the opportunity for both of them to spend some quality un-supervised time with their significant others, it wouldn’t be their last Nationals without their parents’ cat-calling in the crowd.

“I’m so excited!” Blaine whispers against Kurt’s neck, when Mr Shue starts talking set-lists, “I can surf again!”

“You surf?” Kurt asks, surprised.

Blaine had always appeared to be such a focussed type, choreographed, with each step known days before anyone else; not like how Kurt imagined a surfer to be with it’s freedom of movement, the terrifying unpredictability of waves. The roaring sand of oceans is something Kurt associates with muddled last holidays and cold, damp hands pressing into his, spewing vomit into sand and buckets.

He does not fear it; but it creeps into him like cold water trickling down his back.

He smiles, for Blaine.

“Coop taught me,” Blaine explains, grinning and gripping Kurt’s hand tightly. His enthusiasm is infectious and Kurt can’t help joining in with the rousing chorus of ‘Surfin’ USA’ as his friends spin out across the rooms, miming and dipping, laughing as though the lights above were truly the sun and the floor below were truly the ocean. Blaine tugs him closer by his hips and they wave their arms in the air, bumping elbows and heels against toes.

“It’s going to be great really,” Blaine continues, “I can’t wait to show you.”

***

“I should have brought my Lola outfit,” Puck remarks as they queue through passport control, “I think they would appreciate it in Hawaii.”

“Maybe if they’re wearing sunglasses,” Kurt snaps back, the weight of his bag and the tired ache that comes with the nerves of flying and going someplace new twitches his insides.

The bright lights of the airport have dulled all their senses and the entire group are moody and exhausted, squinting at the queue ahead, the only sound being the muffled chatter, so slow it appears almost as one-liners.

“Maybe they’ll appreciate me,” Rachel says, stiffly, still sore from a team-work complaint Mercedes had muttered earlier. Mercedes now rolls her eyes and stuffs a headphone into her ear.

“Everything is going to be great,” Blaine adds, still cheerful, despite the lengthy coach ride to the airport and the lack of food in his body, the sunglasses on his head, tucked, for once, in deep curls make it appear like he is already there, “I’ve never felt more prepared in my whole life.”

“Does this kid have a negative bone in his body?” Burt says, gruffly, as they shuffles closer to the desk, Carole elbows him but Kurt grins, slipping his hand into Blaine’s, invisible in the crush of the crowd.

“We’re going to Nationals,” Blaine adds, “and the beach, who would be unhappy with that all ahead?”

“Blaine right,” Tina adds, as they finally move through passport control and security eyes them with a bored expression, “this is it, we made it, we’ve just got to sing our way to the top.”

***

And like fireworks, gunning across the stage, whizzing around each other and spinning faster and faster in bright circles; they make it all the way to the top. Hearts thumping through the very floor and surrounding the whole group of them in a wave of thunderous realisation that they are here, they’ve done it and the cheers in the crowd held no sarcasm.

They press together, fingers tugging into knots between them, trying to grip everyone all at once. Mercedes hands are around his waist, Rachel’s gripped to his elbow, Finn ruffles a hand through his hand and Blaine holds both of his hands in his.

“And the National Champions are,” the Judge yells out, as a frantic hula-hoopa wiggles across the stage, “the New Directions!”

The rush as the jump together, miss a heartbeat and crash likes waves on beaches, Rachel starts sobbing and Blaine can feel it too in the back of his throat, against the tightness of a wide smile.

They push Finn across the stage to get the trophy when it becomes apparent that Rachel can’t move for shock, he plunges it into the air, like the final rocket of the show and they feel like they are burning with it.

***

The sunlight on Kurt’s skin is more than Blaine could imagine, and the falling light of the evening, brightened by a thousand coloured lights they braided across the front of the marquee, make him glow like a mermaid. They are all glowing and when Blaine suggests that they go for a midnight surf, Sam runs to tackle him and punches a “hell yes!” into his shoulder.

The boys run at the stack of foam boards, dusted with sand from the past day and lash straps around ankles. Sam, Puck, Mike and Finn run at the ocean, sprinting towards the golden flat water, and floating out like lilies on a pond. Blaine waits a moment, turning back to Kurt who digs himself a seat in the sand and pulls his knees to his chest, waving him off.

“Go,” he tells him gently, and Blaine does, sliding his shirt off and pressing a gentle salty kiss against Kurt’s forehead.

The water laps slowly at his feet as he enters, and the weight of the board under his arm makes him grin. It reminds him of summers when Cooper would come home and they would race and flash through the water like dolphins. The lull of the waves at night-time freshens his mind and he slips out a little further than the others, using strong tugs of his arms to sweep him out. Then he turns over onto his back and looks up at the sky, littered with stars.

From here, the water looks black beneath him, a shadowy pit of unknown, the wind rushes salt onto his skin and the scratch of sand against his back and legs itches. He thinks of Kurt and the ebullient that had rushed his features on their triumph, how he wants that together, always, in New York were they’ll spin and dance together, where they’ll sneak into music shops and play piano until his fingers ache and Kurt’s voice is raw with it and then they’ll grip each other through the night faces pressed against necks and chests and everything will be perfect.

“Hey Blaine,” Sam calls, lazily kicking towards him as he straddles the board, “Want some company?”

“Mmm,” Blaine responds, sitting up slowly, feeling the tug of stomach muscles shifting him forward. He presses his hands into the rough material of the board, it is perfectly balanced, “We should go surfing properly tomorrow.”

“Yeah that would be cool,” Sam responds, “You any good?”

“It’s been a while,” Blaine admits, tilting his head back into the wind as it rushes at his skin, “But yeah, I’m pretty good.”

“Can you imagine singing out here?” he asks, after a pause.

They both start humming together, and then the song builds at Blaine starts first. Their voices drift endlessly across the water, echoing deep caverns of music into the slight dips into the water. From across the bay they can hear the others join in, softly at first and then stronger, until the dips and sways they create in the imperfect harmonies, scatter around them light the wind and light.

Across the water, Kurt hums along with them, sifting sand between his fingers and trying not to look to far, to see how there is no end to it, how the horizon drops against the water and how Blaine is just a buoy bobbing on it, bright in the darkness, his tan skin shining with salt water, and his voice bridging across the infinite space.

But he smiles when the girls flump beside him, dumping their shoes and drinks and running at the water, squealing as they dip their toes and ripple the delicate lacy edge of the sand.

“Not a big fan of the water either?” Artie asks as he rolls up to Kurt, his wheels sinking into the sand.

“I guess not,” Kurt responds, “Do want me to help you out, so you can sit here with me?”

Artie shrugs helplessly, but smiles gratefully, holding out his arms so Kurt can grip around his waist. He’s never really thought about how fragile Artie is, how, now that he’s sat on the ground, he cannot move. How his legs only dangle like puppet strings. He wonders what it would be like to have so little to choose from. Would he feel truly human, or half-robot with wheels for legs. Artie is, despite this, the strength of their group the cogs behind it turning and pulling them forwards. Raising a fist and pulling them back down to earth.

“We won,” Kurt says, finally, “I mean we really did it.”

“We should have done ‘Sit down your rocking the boat’,” Artie responds, his gloves hands gripping the sand tightly, like he might tip off the earth were he to let go.

“We didn’t just rock it, Artie,” Kurt replies, leaning back so their shoulders are touching and they can listening to the voices dancing across the water, “We tipped the whole thing over.”

“Yeah,” Artie says, quietly, “Not on my damn watch, you’re not catching me going in there any time soon.”

“It’s sort of terrifying isn’t it?” Kurt murmurs back, “I mean anything could be out there, under all that, I mean, you couldn’t breathe could you? And you can’t control it.”

“It’s coming closer,” Artie adds, pointing out the rush of the tide and the rock that the girls were stood against, now engulfed in water. The moon is creeping on them, shuffling it’s shadow closer and closer and whittling away at the sand deep below the others feet, entangling them in the in-between.


	2. Chapter 2

The next day only Blaine, Sam and Puck decide to press through the forest towards the thrust of ocean a local had said was perfect for surfing. The others remain at the main beach, content for lazy swimming and lounging in the sand.

The air is hot with summer and damp from the thrill of the ocean as they get closer and closer. The tread of mulched dirt and leaves gets grittier as they reach the sandy shore and Blaine tugs his sandals off, feeling the dirt and sand harden his feet. Behind him endless cliff faces are sliced up by waterfalls that skitter on and on. The board under his armpit feels safe and when they finally run across the sand together he feels light despite the weight of it. When he strapped to it, the board feels like part of him.

The waves are perfect, evenly spread with a high rise to them, breaking only as they peak and then running fast towards the shore. Blaine aches to be among them.

“Jesus, you don’t get this in Ohio,” Puck breathes out, before dunking his board into the water, the weight of it flips him over and he comes up choking for air. The other two bend over in laughter, trying to breathe again before smoothly slipping into the waves.

Hours later, Sam and Blaine are racing, arms fiercely griping at the water, stroke after stroke slicing up the waves. Puck loiters behind watching them humorously. In the concentration of their race, neither boy notices the darkening of the waves beneath them, shadows moving in the black depths. The water becomes unseasonably still, and the waves become soft and penetrable, like the water itself is loosening in vulnerability.

Blaine’s dolphin-bottomed board slices through the water, easily, like butter and he drifts ahead of Sam, his experience winning over Sam’s length and strength in his arms. Grinning, he swoops his arm down for another stroke, happy enough with the win to no longer continue, not with the pitiful offering of waves the ocean is offering.

His arm hangs in the water for a moment as he turns to call out his success to Sam but mid yelp he feels something swoop under him and grip his shoulder, at first it feels tight and uncomfortable, like he’s losing circulation and then there is impenetrable pain.

He lets out a scream that could curdle the water they float on. I’m dying, he thinks, I’m being torn apart. Rushes of water crash over him as Puck and Sam frantically, paddle towards him, dragging the board away so he’s torn away from the jaws that rip at him. Something leaves with it but he can’t concentrate on anything but the searing pain and the lightness of his mind, itching to get out.

Puck pulls at his body, shouting for help and he slips a little off the board until they can tug him onto the rough surface of the reef, sharp pain stutters along his spine and the blue of the sky spins over him blotting with dark spots.

“Call the hospital,” Puck shouts to Sam whose body is retching forward into the ocean. Blaine can’t breathe, the splotches above him are leaking further and further and everything is smudging into nothing, he can’t work out what hurts and what doesn’t, “Sam I need you to work with me here,” Puck adds.

“Ok,” Sam breathes, reaching for his phone deep in the ziplock bag in his pocket, typing frantically.

Puck tugs at Blaine’s skin, tipping him to one side and ripping the leash of Blaine’s foot to yank it around and around his shoulder stemming the blood as it seeps everywhere. Red against pale skin, red against Puck’s hands, red ink seeping into the waves across the way.

“Come on,” Puck says, gripping the board and tugging it up the beach, “Come on, come on, come on.”

“He can’t die,” Sam chokes out, he’s tears spittling onto Blaine’s barely awake face, as Sam bends over to lift the other end of the board so they can stumble back up the beach, to a truck waiting, so they can career around corners.

“I can’t drive,” Sam says, when they reach the rented truck, his shaking hands shoving the board, jamming it against the side, so Blaine’s body thumps against it and his head lolls to the side. Sam cradles it back onto the board, trying to stop his jittering fingers, his wrist thwacking against the metal of the truck.

“Sam pull it together,” Puck says, almost angrily, shoving him into the passenger side, and ramming the car into gear, jarring them out of the forest, the road bumps beneath them and they squint with it. Sam tries to ignore Puck continued cursing to himself between faint, “I don’t know how to get there, I can’t, they need to be here, where the hell are they?”

They hear the ambulance first, its piercing screeches giving them enough time to pull over and grapple for Blaine’s body, slapping his face in the hope that he’ll wake up.

“I need to phone Kurt,” Sam says, suddenly and Puck’s face falls, pale and wet still with salt-water.

“What can we possibly tell him?” he asks, as the paramedics round on them, efficiently manoeuvring Blaine into their white van.

“Follow us to the hospital, ok?” One turns to them to say.

They nod silently and duck back into the truck. The voicemail they leave on Kurt’s phone reads simply: ‘something got to Blaine, get to the hospital now.’ The whirr of the car’s engine is not enough to drown out the tugging criticisms that their minds chuck at their skulls, accusations against speed, against wit, against cowardice.

In the Ambulance, Blaine can breathe again, with only the help of the clear plastic mask that settles over his face like a snow-globe. His skin is crusted with sand and salt and wet with blood. His t-shirt is soaked to his skin and he feels both cold and feverish, everything feels off-balanced and he longs for Kurt, for his hands against his face and neck and holding his fingers tightly. Instead he feels numbness and dense air.

He listens for the thump, thump, of his gurney, crashing down the hallway. He is red alert, red, red, spotting against his skin. Heavy yells, strap him into himself. And red is what he sees before there is nothing but darkness.

***

Kurt leaves his his flip-flops and phone abandoned where they slipped from his hands as he sprints from the beach, sand spraying up his leg. The others call after him but he simply grabs Artie from the deck and haphazardly wheels him until he can haul him into the front seat and ram his chair in the back.

“I don’t know what’s happening,” he explains as the car begins and he spins out of the parking lot his fingers ticking nervously against the wheel. His eyes bulge against his too pale skin, like they might burst out, the very pieces of him fraying with Blaine in danger, “But Sam calls and it’s something to do with the water I just know it, I told you, and I knew you’d understand.”

“Kurt, where did Sam say we need to go?” Artie says, authoritatively, hoping that the steadiness of his voice will calm Kurt’s somewhat erratic driving.

“The hospital,” Kurt breathes out, closing his eyes for a moment before he feels like he’s tipping and opens them, “I can hear the sirens in my head and,” he glances at Artie, gnawing his lip with his teeth, “he can’t be back there, he just can’t, with his eye and before and it’s not the place for him, he can’t be there.”

“I’m sure they’ll be doing their best,” Artie replies, focussing on the rhythm of his speech rather than his words, knowing that Kurt is not really listening to anything other than the ideas that whip at his skull.

“Yes, but I don’t know if I can do it either,” he adds, quietly as they pull into the hospital lot. The outside seems quiet compared to the inside where their fantasies are being ripped apart. Kurt tries not to hurt Artie as he almost rams him back into his chair, murmuring desperate apologies and then they’re hurtling into the building towards the front desk.

“Please, it’s Blaine Anderson, is he ok? Please let him be ok,” Kurt rushes out.

“He’s in surgery at the moment,” the woman smiles fondly, but frowns at his bare feet. Until now Kurt has not noticed hold cold they are, they’re almost blue with it, “he’s lost a lot of blood and obviously with a shark bite there’s risk of infection…”

“It was a shark?” Kurt repeats, paling further and gripping Artie’s chair even tighter, despite Artie’s perfect ability to wheel himself around, “it bit him?”

“Took his arm it looked like,” the woman adds, snapping gum between her teeth and turning back to the computer, “You can wait by the chairs if you want.”

“No, I’m not doing that,” Kurt breathes out but Artie tugs at his hands until he can wheel him backwards into a chair, spinning around to face him and pressing their hands together.

“It’s going to be ok,” he says, softly, trying to hide his own panic, “but we do need to call his parents and yours…”

“His arm, Artie,” Kurt says finally, sinking back into his chair pulling his blue feet up onto it. He feels dull and heady, like he’s dreaming. This isn’t something they can heal, not like a starfish. This is a piece of Blaine he will never get back, a hand he’ll never hold, an elbow that will never hold him close again. His face aches, “you can’t just take something like that; it doesn’t make sense.”

“Kurt, we don’t know anything yet, ok?” Artie replies, “give me your phone, ok, I’ll call everyone.”

“I left it on the beach,” Kurt tells him, pressing his face into his knees to try and get some feeling back, “this can’t be happening, I thought it would just be he hit a rock or something, I don’t know but there’s so much out there, out in the water. Why did he even go out there? Who would want that? You can’t feel the bottom, you can’t feel anything. Oh God, he couldn’t feel it. What if he doesn’t know? What if he’s freaking out? Of course he’s freaking out.”

“Kurt I’m going to need you to sit here and breathe for me, ok?” Artie interrupts him kindly, “I know waiting’s the hard part ok, but however much you tie things in knots it’s not going to change things back there, ok?” he reminds him, before wheeling away to the front desk again. Kurt watches the wheels spin and imagines a tinier Artie who ran and played, whose very being was wreckaged. Once out of earshot Artie lets out a deep strained breath and feels his face flood with panic, who could rewrite Kurt and Blaine life like this, rip open the already delicate pages, strip away the neatly stitches back together paper reminders of their lives so far together. The sickly white walls of the hospital call to him, hark back to ages past, there is no good outcome to such ghostly places, only manageable, he hopes as his fingers cross over one another, twisting in the receptionist’s phone cord.


	3. Chapter 3

The rush of people and his father’s gruff voice in his ear wakes Kurt from where he’s been almost sleeping; cut off from the world in tiredness, but the bluish light of the hospital crashing waves upon waves of thought across his skull.

“Kid, I’ve spoken to Blaine’s parents,” Burt tells him, sinking into the seat next to him, his boxy frame making the seat look childish in comparison, “look, don’t get angry ok, we all deal with this stuff our own way but Cooper’s coming down, he’s on a flight at the moment…”

“They’re not coming are they?” Kurt asks, his voice made childish by the presence of his Dad and the aftermath of rushed tears that he finally allowed to stream in Artie’s absence.

“Not until the weekend at least,” Burt replies, obviously disappointed in the apparent lack of parenting and that he has to express such things to his only son, curled into his seat like he might never move again, “But we’re going to stay here, ok? Me, you, Carole and Blaine and anyone who wants to, we’ve rented a house and we’re staying until Blaine can move.”

“Is it really…” Kurt starts, swallowing his words so he can rework them against his gums, catching them between his teeth, “his arm, is it?”

“Kid, I don’t know what to tell you,” Burt says, tiredly, slinging an arm around his son, until he lets his head flump against his shoulder, his soft tufts of hair reminiscent of those he was born with, tickling his throat as he screamed through those first few nights, “It’s not going to be the same, but he’s stable they’ve said, he’s lost about sixty percent of his blood so he might be out for a few days but Puck was really fantastic out there, he saved his life; you should go thank him.”

“Is he here?” Kurt asks, glancing around the room where his friends are scattered, smudged against walls, lolled in chairs, drifting, waiting for something to happen.

“He took Sam back to the hotel about an hour ago,” Burt explains, pointing out the scruff of a Mohawk jutting out from the corner of room, between the vending machine and the wall, head in hands, no shirt, only shorts, stained with something Kurt is trying not to think about, “he had a bit of a panic I think.”

“Sam just went?” Kurt asks, sitting up stiffly, feeling an anger well in him that he hadn’t felt yet, “just like that?”

“You can’t imagine what he might have gone through out there, kid needs his sleep, Kurt,” Burt explains.

“I know I can’t imagine,” Kurt replies, aggressively, before slipping back into his Father’s warm arm, “I should have been there, I knew there’d be something, it’s not safe out there out in the water, it’s…”

“This kind of thing really is very rare,” Burt tries to calm his son pressing a solid hand between his shoulder and rubbing like he did as they rocked together in those early days, trying not to wake an exhausted Elizabeth, “he was just really unlucky, Kurt.”

“He had his fair share of unluckiness,” Kurt whines turning his face into his Father’s neck, breathing harsh air through his teeth and trying to push the burning cinders of heartache out of his eyes and ears, “You shouldn’t get that more than once you know? You just shouldn’t.”

“Kurt,” Burt starts, taking his son’s chin so they can truly face each other, “I know this might be hard to understand but most people they get that ambulance call, that’s it, there’s no car out, to get that chance again and again, it’s a form of luck ok? He’s going to be ok. He’s not in pain any more. And he’s going to live for a really long time, no matter what.”

“Dad, I’m sorry,” Kurt responds, knowing they’re both picturing his mother’s drawn out face, the sirens that rang and rang out, the ones that trembles with hope, the one where he sketched out black suits in his head and the one she begged them not to call until it came only to take away a lifeless body.

“Just go and talk to Puck will you?” Burt continues, ruffling his hair, “give you both some distraction.”

Kurt nods and pulls himself up onto unsteady feet, one of his legs has gone numb and the cool floor feels unnaturally smooth under his bare feet as he shuffles towards Puck. He feels the silent eyes of his friends hard at the back of his neck.

“Hey,” he says softly, crouching in front of Puck’s bent neck before slipping into crossed-legged position. Puck lifts his head slowly, a panicked wild look on his face, cracking with the welts of red where his eyes should be. Salt and sand crust against his face. He scrambles further back against the wall, “Hey, it’s ok,” Kurt begins again, reaching out to press a hand against his sand crusted shoulder, “I’m not angry, I wanted to come thank you Puck.”

“For what,” the unfamiliar crunch of a voice responses, almost sarcastically, “For ruining your life?”

“For saving my life,” Kurt corrects him, earnestly.

“I could have done more, if we’d had someone with us,” Puck continues, disregarding Kurt, “We were so dumb to just go out there and I was just making stuff up, I don’t know anything.”

“He’s going to be ok because of you,” Kurt responds, hardly believing how quickly he can turn from smothering himself in anguish to coherently comfort another person. But it hurts to see Puck like this, broken and brave in so many ways, encaging himself so deep in the corners of his mind that he can’t see, like Kurt hadn’t seen, that despite no face being seen, no magnificent grin returning, Blaine’s heart is still beating behind closed doors and Kurt aches for it to beat next to his again, “Are you going to be ok?”

“I keep seeing it, it’s teeth,” Puck closes his eyes, “I mean I tore them from him, literally, they were still gripping him and that was attached to something you know. That’s the water we drink and wash ourselves with, that’s the same water I threw over Finn’s head at that Fourth of July Party, the same water I may have pushed Rachel’s head into when apple-bobbing on Halloween. We can’t escape it and I keep seeing them and I know that it’s not me that people should be thinking about. I mean, Sam practically chucked up his intestines into the ocean and you look like you haven’t breathed in hours and Blaine.”

A sob rips from his throat suddenly and terrifyingly, knocking Kurt sideways into the wall as Puck grips his hand and sobs ‘sorry’ over and over into it, rocking out desperate tears into puddles in his wrists, that drip into elbows.

“It’s all this fucking water,” he wrecks against Kurt’s skin, opening floods of it.

“It’s ok,” Kurt says softly, “It’ll dry, it’s ok, we need the stuff, let it out.”

“Kurt they’ve got to let you in there,” Puck responds, urgently, tugging Kurt closer to his face so he can breathe in his desperate words, “You’ve just got to tell them that you’re all he wants, you’re what will make him survive. I may have saved him but you’ve got to keep on, you’ve just got to.”

“I know,” he replies, “But I’m not family, so I’ve got to wait.”

“Only until they legalise that shit,” Puck adds, smiling slightly, enough to turn the corners of Kurt’s mouth too, a little light in the darkest corner of the hospital. Waiting is the cracks in the glass before it shatters or stays, the wobble of a child before it falls or mends, the sinking of sand under waves, dipping endlessly to the bottom of the earth and back again.

Blaine sinks into the sandy subconscious, free of pain for what feels like final moments. He dreams he’s in a snow-globe, hands against the glass, the final twist of the music box key, slowly turning a frantic dance into slow measured movements, bumping him from side to side. The glass feels unbending but not hard, it feels cool to touch like the soft mill-pond of bathwater.

He dreams of ducking himself under frothy silken water, making waves for himself in pudgy hands tipping tsunamis against ceramic snow-globe edges. A plastic boat scuttles under hand and fearless sailors sing childish songs away on the ocean.

He dreams of wrapping towels, pulling him tight, in white smiles and motherly kisses to tender skin.

He dreams of a board against his hands, plunging to his feet and whipping around to grin and whoop in the nothing air of globes where, his hands are inches from the curved beginning.

He dreams that inky blotches could be wiped away and spilled red wine on white carpets could be covered over with music boxes and dancing feet across crusted sand carpets; that silt in slipping silent waves and green horses on horizons.

He dream-walks across glassy waters, gravity-less, upside down with sticky feet and hair can’t in unmovable breeze. He thinks of tipping things, weights crashing against each other, ticking clocks and blue eyes shuttering open.

It’s the blue eyes that make him want to shatter the glass, that grip tiny ice like splinters as he rams his fist again and again. He slams his feet too, pressing hard, crusted, and his starfish limbs are breaking into unmovable limbs, crunching with something that loosens his grip, dropping him through nothing air into hard plastic boards. His limbs become unbending and joints stiffen into nothing but curved bones.

The blue eyes still light up above him like fireworks, like T. J. Ecclesburg, pleading with him, splurging waves over him in endless tearful puddles, sweeping waterfalls over his unbreakable glass. He tries for tears too but they cannot come. He is dry, dusty with sand and salt. His perfect dreams of perfect water turn to glass memories, cutting, slicing at his skin, battering crusted glass froth, on sandy shores, grazes smattering him.

He is smashed open with it, starfished, waiting for blue-eyed water to run deep enough to gash lines in the glass and retrieve him from the nothing air and silken glass waves.


	4. Chapter 4

Puck and Kurt are still, somehow, tangled together like wet seaweed when Cooper arrives. Despite their most recent visit from him being obnoxiously ostentatious, he scuttles in, quiet and bedraggled from an unplanned flight. Kurt rushes to his feet but watches as his Father leads Cooper to one side and rewrites the Doctor’s note for him in hushed delicate words. Cooper keeps nodding; his face grimaced with lines of anguish that seems to be rotting at him. When Burt finishes he turns to the desk and is, so easily, passed along the corridor. He glances back to Kurt in the last instant and nods. Kurt closes his eyes and puts all in his energy into hoping that he’ll be able to see his precious face again soon, touch his perfect skin; wait for that radiant smile fall from the very face that holds it.

“They’ll let you in soon,” Puck whispers and it feels like a confirmation.

Soon, they hear hushed squabbling from the corridor, with voices that filter acidic remarks back and forth, pin-balling to their ears.

“Kurt is his family ok?” Cooper’s loud voice continues, somehow angrier and more true than any acting they’d ever witnessed, “I don’t care what you do with me, I’d rather sit out in the corridor for the rest of my life than be in there and know that you’ve let him be alone for hours and not let the love of his life be in there with him.”

Suddenly, Cooper is marching towards him and yanking him up by his shoulder, pushing him forwards back down the corridor, past white doorways, and pale fluorescence.

“Sir, he can’t go in without shoes,” the pathetic nurse, calls out weakly.

“Take mine, then,” Cooper says sharply, whipping off his trainers and urging Kurt’s feet into them. They are far too large and Kurt’s bare toes feeling slippery with cold sweat against the rough insides, “Go in,” he says quietly, “Quickly, come on.”

Kurt takes a huge breath and pushes through the swinging door. At first, he focusses his attention to the large window that overlooks the lush greenness of the Hawaiian land, in the distance the ocean innocently sparkles in the late summer sun. He can’t bear to look and see what the monster has done to his boyfriend, but there is nothing left to distract him, not when the very sight of the ocean makes him feel queasy.

Instead, he turns to the bed, dripping with wires and tubes so that Blaine almost looks like a monster himself, but beneath that he can see the round moon face, the dark eyelashes framing the shadows under his eyes, and ragged curls haloing the wires that hook against his face and arms. Arm. Kurt thinks, eyes glazed to the gauzed snow-man stump of a limb on Blaine’s left side. The unnaturally large space of hospital sheets and blankets gaping, ripping at Kurt’s heart.

Blaine’s face is grey with trauma and the constant beeping of machines and dripping of liquid through tubes, makes his sleep seem scattered, disrupted.

It takes Kurt a moment and then he reaching for him, pressing cold fingers against Blaine’s cheek and forehead, whispering kissed reminders of their lives together against ears against his jaw and neck.

“Please, wake up soon, honey,” he pleads, between kisses, “You can go back to sleep right after, I promise ok, just open those eyes for a moment.”

There is no movement, but the glass is splintering in Blaine’s mind, crisping melted glass against his skull, trying to pierce himself awake for the voice that echoes and echoes in his mind and pleads, blue and endless.

Instead, Kurt pulls up a chair and rests he cheek against Blaine’s remaining arm, closing his eyes. He feels safe with the pressure of Blaine’s bones through the sheets and it doesn’t take too long for him to fall into a slow sleep.

Blaine’s mind is scattering pain across his body, as he begins to feel his limbs again, he feels lopsided, like there’s something missing but he still can’t move from the bottom of the snow-globe, he feels trapped, behind heavy lids, like metal shutters to his skull. In what seems like years, he cranks them open, little by little, inky splotches blooming into flowers and then disappearing to only white clouds.

His heart stutters as it tries to remind him that he’s alive and elevates in a panicked screech. It is this that alerts Kurt, when the blood pulsing through him spikes against the wrist pressed against his face.

“Blaine?” he asks, muffled as he raises his head. Warm, desperate eyes catch his attention and he almost yelps to pull the emergency alarm, signalling to the hospital staff, who come wheeling back into the room followed by Cooper.

“He’s awake,” he whispers over and over, “Oh God, he’s awake.”

“Get the kid out of here,” a cloaked Doctor says, and Cooper grabs him so he can hide, defenceless behind him.

“Is this good?” Cooper asks, despite being ignored by the nurses testing across Blaine skin and tubes and wires, “I mean it’s not too early right?”

“We’ll give him something for the pain and to get back to sleep again,” One nurse explains, rushing past him with a menacing looking needle, Cooper grapples behind his back for Kurt’s hand and Kurt presses his forehead between Cooper’s shoulders, his eyes squeezed shut, “but it’s good news that he is reacting and awake.”

“Can he hear what you’re saying?” Kurt asks, quietly, and Cooper repeats for the nurses, “Isn’t he terrified, how can he know what happened?”

Blaine doesn’t know what has happened, as he slips back out of consciousness, he recalls this time Puck and Sam’s presence, the resolute waves that fell short, and something jarring at him. Could it have been…no, only pieces of him fall apart, and he can’t breathe with it. Only jarr his memory into sticky blood-swept oceans that he still feels against his skin.

“Come on,” Kurt pleads, “Please, let me talk to him.”

“Kurt, you’re not even supposed to be still in the room,” Cooper hisses back, pressing them further into the corner so Kurt is as trapped as Blaine, blocked out by the shadows of the bustling show of nursing staff.

“He doesn’t know anything,” Kurt continues, his throat wet, “just look at him for me. Just look.”

Cooper does look and the flailing in his brother’s eyes that have ripped back open from the ocean of his mind is enough to persuade him. He surges forward, knocking a nurse to the side and grappling for Blaine’s remaining hand under the sheets, “It’s going to be ok, Blainey,” he starts, “you’re in the hospital, there was an attack but everyone’s fine, you’ve lost your…”

“Now is not a good time for this, Mr Anderson,” A nurse says, pointedly, ignoring the fact that Blaine’s eyes suggest that he is more alive and with a greater capability to listen than any of them put together, “We will discuss the future when he’s in a coherent state.”

“He is coherent, look at him,” Cooper points wildly as Blaine’s eyes spot-light between them, hurriedly, “Blainey, they’re going to get you to sleep some more, but after that Kurt and I are going to come back and we’re going to talk this through ok?”

Something in Blaine’s eyes dips like a nod and the nurses finally succeed in a powerful enough drug to shutter Blaine back again. The stillness is deeper than before and, without really thinking about it, Cooper shuffles Kurt out the door.

They lean against it for a moment, breathing in the putrid air of consciousness, gulping in what they had just witnessed in faint incoherent jolts.

Much later when a neat darkness has settled in the windows of the hospital and only Kurt, Cooper and Carole remain, they are told that Blaine is fully awake, talking and refusing to go back to sleep until he sees them. Kurt is calmer now, having expressed his anger to Carole and her responding as to the realities of rule following in hospitals. He knows the unfairness is not just his, not just Blaine’s but everyone’s; locals who express their guilt in surfing the waves for decades unscratched, doctors who send them empathetic looks. They all know the teeth marks that remain have ripped holes in their worlds.

“Cooper,” Kurt hisses, nudging the sleeping brother awake so that they can shuffle back down the corridor. Kurt’s feet still falter in over-sized shoes and Cooper’s socks slip against plastic floors.

“Kurt?” a small voice asks, as they enter.

“I’m here, baby, I’m here,” Kurt exclaims, rushing to Blaine’s bedside and fumbling in the sheets for his hand. There is only emptiness.

“It’s not here, I know it’s not here,” Blaine mumbles, almost incoherently, tossing to one side a little before Kurt presses a hand to his chest and holding his heart in place, “I keep imagining it’s going to grow back, I was dreaming about it, like a starfish, you know?” his eyes plead desperately. To Cooper he is the Blaine of their childhood, forgotten and vulnerable in the corner, wrapped in a cloak of blankets disguised as fierce bravery, sheltering unimaginable fear. He is the beaten, bandaged, eyeless, burst appendix, broken finger , swaddling child emerging from the womb.

“I’m right here,” Kurt says, fiercely tears threatening at the back of his skull, swarming forwards like building waves on the horizon, “And I am not leaving.”

“Kurt are the others…” Blaine starts, living, under the blue gaze that surrendered him from sleep’s massacre.

“Everyone’s fine, just worried, about you,” Kurt explains, finally reaching across the bed so he can grip Blaine hand on the other side of his body, and offering a weak smile before the rushes of reality flood out of his mouth, “I was so worried I thought I was going to die,” he tells him, “I thought we both were, and I practically kidnapped Artie…”

“Honey, we’re both here,” Blaine reminds him, softly.

Cooper watches their comfort bounce across in canon, from one to each other, sharing each moment, accepting each others fear and bravery as on entity to admire and treasure.

“Coop,” Blaine addresses his brother, finally, “Are Mum and Dad, I mean, I know they’re busy…”

“They’re going to come down as soon as they can,” Cooper lies, tongue buried against his teeth, to shovel white lies against them, like plaque. His parents are not coming soon. His mother is silently weeping and moving, through coffee-induced meetings, shaking with adrenaline that rots her fear of white walls and weeping child, post-post-post natal, he calls it. And their Father, with assistant’s fingers plugged into his ears, continues on, delegates another slice of paperwork, reading SON INJURED and calls across the brother, delegated Father to new adulthood.

“It’s ok,” Blaine says, dimpling with a smile that they never thought they’d see again, wetting tears from all of their eyelids, “I just need you two.”

“I need you too,” Kurt croaks out, quite suddenly, his body surging to press chest to chest with Blaine, his lips carving kisses against Blaine’s neck. The intimacy of the moment shuffles Cooper back into the corridor, breathing heavy sighs for appearances of boys on staircases, hours after a voicemail message that had skittered his bones together, of cold voices and tired watches that where a tiny voice had told him to look for the reasons, scrapped pieces of paper he had hoped never to see the light of day.

There is a kind of need between people that can be believed. A kind of brokenness that when connected feels like sleep looks, peaceful and natural in the greatest form. Cooper does not have to go back into the room to know that what his brother needs is Kurt’s strong hands to hold him deeply enough to forgot his loss. There is no other hope than this, he thinks, Kurt has to be the missing piece that will mold him back to reality or destroy him forever.

Back in the room, there is only silent muttering of love and hope and gratitude that Kurt presses deep into Blaine skin, lips like scalding irons, scorching messages he prays Blaine will not forget. His hands catch at the sheets and dig for the edges of Blaine, new edges that he tries not to think too deeply about. First, he must make Blaine know that his love is never unwinding, is tied with bowlines of memory.

“Kurt,” Blaine chokes out, into Kurt’s hair, “What’s going to happen?”

“We’re going to stay here until you get better,” Kurt responds, not moving so his words puddle against Blaine’s collarbone, “And then we’re going to finish the year, we’re both going to do fantastically but it won’t matter because we’re already in at NYADA and then we’re going to go to New York and live, Blaine, we’re going to live.”

“What roles am I going to play, with one arm?” Blaine asks desperately, “who would fall in love with a limbless Fiyero or a lopsided Tony.”

“Then you’ll make your own romantic leads,” Kurt lifts his head, finally, his eyes bright with something, “leads built on fire and bravery. There may not be roles written for us but theatre is a moving art, Blaine, what is theatre if it is designed to challenge, to shock, to pursue depths of reality. What you have is real and unique and no lack of limb is going to take that talent away from you.”

“But, what if I can’t dance properly?” Blaine asks again, feeling unnaturally still as he is pressed into the mattress by his own pain and lifelessness.

“What even is dancing properly, Blaine?” Kurt remarks, his head thrown sideways. But he turns back to Blaine’s eyeline and offers, genuinely, “You’ll learn to use your body again, I promise.”

“I’m scared,” Blaine whispers, his honest admission scatters around the room like dust particles, cracking Kurt’s throat open and spittling his eyes until he wants to rub them bare.

“I know,” he crackles out, “I know. But we’re going to be ok, I promise.”

Blaine tries to believe the promises that the blue eyes bring, these blue eyes that cracked him back to the surface, shattered the waves that trapped him, but the spaces beside him leave such chasms in his future plans, path that he had so carefully embroidered for himself on dreamless nights. He feels like a great hurricane has come and left him only with a waste-land and a hand reaching out in the dark to show him a direction from his broken compass.


	5. Chapter 5

They let Blaine fall back into well-needed sleep and Cooper watches as Kurt finally allows himself to drift off too. In sleep they look much the same, two pieces of one whole, their eyes smudged with dark bruises of worry and exhaustion.

  
Much later the others arrive, Blaine wakes again and they crank the bed up so he can see everyone without cricking his neck. The come in in pairs, like Noah’s Ark, so as not to crowd the room. The girls simply huddle and press mumbled expressions of relief against his forehead, wandering eyes across the room desperately try to avoid the gaps in Blaine’s anatomy. Rachel’s speeches of overcoming difficulties are hushed by Mercedes and Tina only presses her lips together, trying not to cry.

  
Artie comes in alone and rolls up to his bedside, holding eye contact with Kurt rather than Blaine.

  
“How you holding up buddy?” he asks, to both of them.

  
“Yeah, I’m pretty tired,” Blaine says, softly, Kurt nods in agreement but mouths apologies and thanks across the bed in the hope that Artie might catch how grateful he is for pulling him through this far.

  
“They’ll get you out soon,” Artie expresses, pushing his glasses further up his nose, “I know hospital’s suck but they just want to make sure your okay and then as soon as they trust it, they’ll let you go.”

  
“We’re staying here a little longer,” Kurt explains to Blaine, taking his hand, eyes caressing him, “We’ve got a little rented house, so you don’t have to move to quick, just for a week or so and me you and Cooper and Dad and Carole,” he rambles off, Blaine watches him with wild eyes, “and whoever you want, your parents can come down and visit, no pressure.”

  
“They’re not going to come,” Blaine says, coldly.

  
“Of course they are, at the weekend, later,” Kurt adds, squeezing his hand a little tighter, “they couldn’t get out of work but you’ll see.”

  
“My Dad didn’t come in for two days after the accident,” Artie admits, “he was just scared. Sometimes they need a little time.”

  
“Is Sam coming?” Blaine asks, already too raw emotionally to really address Artie’s admission. Kurt offers him a empathetic nod of the head but Artie shrugs and adjusts a suspender across his shoulder, before ducking his head at Blaine’s question, “What?” Blaine repeats, seeing this, “Did he get hurt too?”

  
“No, no, honey,” Kurt says, quickly, scrambling so he can press a hand against Blaine cheek, calming his frantic eyes and the jolt of his neck as he tries to sit up, “He’s fine.”

  
“He just needs some time,” Artie explains, quietly.

  
“What do you mean?” Blaine asks, knocking away Kurt’s hand and turning back to Artie his eyes dark with confusion that turns into cold understanding, “Like my parents you mean? He’s too scared?”

  
“Blaine, we were all terrified,” Kurt says quietly, in response to Blaine’s accusation, Artie nods and Kurt realises how true what he’s saying is, how terrified Artie must have been, being dragged to the car, with an almost lifeless Kurt, grasping for him at the hospital.

  
“But you’re here,” Blaine almost whines.

  
“I know it doesn’t seem fair,” Artie adds, “but everyone deals with things in their own way, I know you have been asleep so it seems like we’re all acting really weird but a lot of the girls have only just stopped crying, Puck tried to steal a car earlier and it’s not that he doesn’t want to see you, I think he’s just scared of what it’s going to be like to see you. Does that make sense?”

  
“Because of the shark?” Blaine asks, Kurt flinches, right through to the jerk of his hand against Blaine shoulder where it’s resting, “It’s okay,” Blaine says, softly, “It’s not like I don’t know.”

  
“Puck’s going to see him now,” Artie tells him, “And, if that’s what you want, he’ll bring him right here.”

  
“Yeah, bring him here,” Blaine breathes out finally, dipping his head to the side so he can press a kiss against the tender skin between Kurt’s knuckles, “I need to know this is real, I need to see him, I just...”

  
“I get it,” Artie says, turning to wheel back out of the room, “most of the time what the body tells us isn’t enough, we need the eyes of others to see our realities. You learn a lot from other people when all the mirrors are suddenly hung too high.”

  
“Artie,” Kurt croaks out, and he looks over his shoulder, “When they come, will you stay? I’d like to talk to you.”

  
“I don’t know if I’m going to be the help you need,” Artie replies, almost sadly, as he reaches an arm up to tug at the door handle, awkwardly maneuvering his wheelchair back through the heavy door that clunks heavily against his hidden bruised knuckles.

  
“It’s not that,” Kurt responds, “It’s just I want to thank you, no more than that, just would you?” he continues on, almost desperately.

  
“Okay,” Artie nods and finally swings through the door, leaving them in the sinking silence, alone.

***

Puck rams his fist so hard, into the metal frame of the hotel room’s door, that new and old scabs open up on his knuckles and blood streams down his wrist. He’s been at it for some time, ramming and jamming, knocking and kicking and at one point head-butting.

  
“I know you’re in there, alright?” He calls out, hoping his voice can be heard through the metal, “My fist is bleeding and if you don’t let me in it’s going to get worse.”  
Silence continues, hanging in the hallway like an unwanted visitor’s coat.

  
“I’m not really angry, Sam,” Puck tries a different tact, “I just want to check you’re alright, dude that stuff out there was crazy and you were really out of it yesterday.”

  
The door shuffles open slowly, and a creased mop of blonde hair appears, scruffy shirt and bleached jeans. His faced is blotted open, with mottled red blurs like ink. Puck can see the scratches up his arms, whether from the rocks they had pulled Blaine onto, or that he had torn into himself when rocking on the way back to the hotel. He hadn’t even seemed real then.

  
“Dude, can I come in?” Puck asks.

  
Sam nods, and curls the door back, slumping back to the bed that is torn open, ravaged but terror-induced sleep. Puck leans against a wall and watches his friend flop so carelessly onto his back that he might well be a rag doll.

  
“Dude you’ve got to go see him,” Puck gets right to it, whipping at the point like a band-aid. He can see the sting of it in Sam’s face.

  
“I’m worried that I’m not going to be able to see him properly anymore,” he voices, his voice tight, he presses his head back into the pillow and plunges his knuckles against his eyes, “Because when I close my eyes, and picture it, I can just see the blood, over and over. It knocks me out; I don’t know if I can do it.”

  
“That’s dumb, dude,” Puck expresses, though fondly. He feels the pain to, it crunches at his soul; and it’s not just what he said to Kurt, it’s everything. But he wants to see Blaine, because Blaine is real, and alive and so so brave and he deserves for them to come back to him and be brave too, “You’re going to see Blaine; the same Blaine who doesn’t just indulge in your superhero fantasies but actually loves them equally, the Blaine who was totally up for my idea of a water pistol fight to raise money for nationals and who was the only one who thanked me when I dressed up as Lola. Sam,” Puck starts, edging forward until he’s sat on the edge of the bed, “He’s still you’re best friend.”

  
“I thought he was going to die,” Sam utters, but his voice is weaker, like he might give in, “You don’t just get over that.”

  
“I know,” Puck replies, shifts forward so he’s crouched right beside Sam, he can feel the fear radiating off him, the frantic shake of it, “You don’t get over it by not going to see that we really saved him; he’s really alive.”

  
“But, he’s never going to...” Sam starts, before shaking his head and pushing himself off the bed, “No, you’re right, I’m being a douche, this isn’t fair,” he looks up, the red rims of his eyes, look like he’s been trying to scrub out all the memories of that day, “I’m just really scared.”

  
“I know,” Puck tells him, feeling the fear he had felt all day sink into him and grits his teeth together, “But things get easier when you know what you’re facing huh?”

***

  
Artie turns towards the door when they hear a shuffle further down the corridor and awkwardly rolls around Sam and Puck, Kurt nods towards Puck but follows quickly after, until he is out in the corridor and can only hear muffled voices within.

  
The corridor feels darker than before, and as Artie rolls up to an abandoned chair down the corridor and forces Kurt to sit; Kurt feels a muffled panic rise up in him again. He wants to thank Artie for staying with him, for understanding; but most of all he wants to apologise, for all those years they let him trail behind, for the terrible time they were going to let him be driven by his mother, all the times they never thought about what it must be like.

  
But all that comes out is his name.

  
“Kurt,” Artie replies, almost tenderly, but his face is serious, “Listen, I know that you probably think that I’m trying to compare myself to Blaine to guilt trip you all, or whatever, but I’m not, I just want you all to see it’s possible...”

  
“No,” Kurt interrupts him outraged, “I would never think that, we know you’re just trying to help,” he takes a hulking breath to give him the strength to continue with what he had wanted to say, “What I wanted to say was Thank You, really you do understand, more than anyone.”

  
“It’s not going to be okay straight away,” Artie starts, “I know you can’t really think about that at the moment; but not everything’s going to be different okay? You still love each other,” He uncharacteristically grasps for Kurt’s hand and for the first time Kurt feels the soft graze of his gloves, he thinks again of how he’d never even considered Artie’s situation before, and how long had they been friends? “You can’t forget that,” Artie continues earnestly, interrupting Kurt’s thoughts.

  
“What?” Kurt asks, shaking himself back to the surface.

  
“Sometimes a little tilt feels like you’re upside down, and you’re not,” Artie explains, “If you’re going to make it through this, you can’t forget that your love is still real and strong.”

  
Kurt looks surprised and a little relieved, “Artie I’m not going to forget that I love Blaine, Blaine is everything to me,” but there is something in Artie’s unwavering gaze that makes him falter.

  
“It’s going to be harder than you think,” Artie answers his accusing look, raising his hand in the air, “That’s all I’m saying, and you’ll probably feel angry and guilty and you just need to remember to feel what you need to feel and not be afraid to find it difficult yourself.”

  
“It’s Blaine’s life,” Kurt starts, already feeling the guilt creep up on him, zipping up his spine like a shiver.

  
“No, it’s not,” Artie explains, and suddenly there it is, what Kurt was glad was never there before, a twinkle of pity in the corner of his eye, “No one’s life is truly their own, what happens to you affects more than you and what happens to other people can hurt you, because we weren’t designed to live alone, we were designed to care for people and make lives together and you and Blaine have already done that,” Kurt blushes under his intensity and tries to ignore the muddled nature of his nerves, “So the worst thing you can do is pretend that what happens to Blaine is all about him, because every little island shares the same tide.”

  
***

Blaine feels the cold air of movement and closes his eyes against it. The stillness of his body makes Sam want to turn back, back away from the greying face that even the echoed heartbeat of the machines cannot disturb from his imaginings. His feet shuffle against the floor and Puck gives him a shove that knocks a gust of air out of his lungs.

  
“Is someone there?” Blaine asks, jolting his eyes open, his voice is tired from the fear his admissions to Kurt had given him.

  
“It’s me,” Sam says quietly, after a moment, he tries to keep the jittering out of his hands but his arms feel more alive and vulnerable than ever before. He longs for the safety of a guitar beneath his shoulder.

  
“Sam?” Blaine asks, trying to sit up and groaning when it’s too much. Without thinking Sam jumps forward to help shifting a pillow beneath his friend’s head so they can look at each other. Panic cuts at his nerves when his thoughts catch up with his moments, and the first thing he thinks is that he is not ready.

  
He nods quickly, hoping that he is not showing his fear. He wants to appear brave, but there is no bravery in the nearly lost.

  
“Can you please say something?” Blaine asks, again, the softness of his voice is eerily colourless.

  
“Hi,” Sam manages.

  
“You can sit,” Blaine suggests, trying not to gesture knowing that it will only remind him that there is no longer anything there. Sam sits, pulling his knuckles between his knees and tucking his ankles around the legs of the chair.

  
“Blaine, I’m really sorry,” Sam starts although he isn’t quite sure where he’s going with it, he’s not sure how he can make sense of the place they are now in, the things that have happened, the stench of blood he can still feeling tingling at the back of his throat.

  
“I don’t want to talk about that,” Blaine replies curtly, “I’m really struggling to make anything past this hospital bed at the moment and I just need to know that you’re not going to be scared of me forever. Because I need you, I need you to still be my friend…”

  
“Blaine,” Sam starts again feeling the pulse of water under his eyelid, “I’m sorry, I’m…”

  
“I asked you not to do that,” Blaine interrupts, closing his eyes so Sam can see the dark ridges of his trauma cutting new shadows under his eyes. Sam closes his eyes with him, hoping to see nothing, and hissing as he sees the blood again over and over.

  
“This is why I was scared to come,” Sam admits, “I was scared I’d do the wrong thing, that I’d hurt you.”

  
“I don’t care about that,” Blaine exhales tiredly, “Look, just go, please, I don’t need this.”

  
Sam does not have the energy nor the courage to argue, instead he leaves, guilt filling the gaps between the relief that shutters through him. He turns away from Puck who calls back out to him and almost sprints back down the corridor, past Artie and Kurt, who break away from their conversation to watch him pass.

  
“It’ll get better,” Artie repeats.

  
“I know you said that people deal with things differently,” Kurt replies, his knuckles clenching white hot, “But there have to be wrong way right?”

  
“Yes,” Artie admits, dismally, “There are always wrong ways, as there are always better ways.”


	6. Chapter 6

When Blaine is finally released from the hospital, the Hummels have already settled into the rented house and are frantically trying to make the place homely enough for Blaine. Carol plans a barbeque lunch to celebrate his return, in the hope that the warm air and perfect view will lighten his spirits. 

Burt and Kurt are silent as they drive to pick him up, Kurt had only really left the hospital a few days before, opting to sleep in an actual bed so he could be more awake when he was with Blaine. Not that Blaine had spoken about anything other than leaving since then.

Blaine is already sat, with his bag ready, on the edge of the bed when they arrive. He looks as he always had, his hair gelled perfectly, although he’ll never tell Kurt that he had cried when he had to ask a nurse for help; and he wears a blue polo shirt and cargo shorts. The only different is one arm of the polo shirt in sewn together holding his bandage in place and his other hand is gripping tightly to the sheet. 

“Are you ready to go?” Kurt asks sweetly, a little scared of the reaction. 

Blaine nods and stands up, trying to lift the bag before Burt grabs it off him and swings it easily over his shoulder. He doesn’t argue as he usually would. 

Neither of them talk as they walk to the car, but Kurt slips in beside Blaine in the back seat and takes his hand firmly in his. 

Not knowing what else to do, he starts rambling.

“You know, Carol’s made the most perfect lunch. It smelt absolutely divine when we left the house and there’s all your favourites,” he keeps on and on trying to fill the gaps, “And there’s all the meats for you and Finn and I might even let Dad have some, because I chose the leanest meat.” 

He stops, then squeezes Blaine’s hand a little tighter, turning to him, “I know we’re not properly home yet, but it’s a really nice place, and your parents have said they’re coming…”

“That’s really nice,” Blaine says quietly, interrupting, letting go of Kurt’s hand so he can cling to his knee before clenching into a fist. Kurt remembers how he always held his hands   
in his lap together when he was nervous and how he now can’t see to grip anything at all, “It’s just I’m really tired is all.” 

“That’s ok,” Kurt replies, his voice a little too high, he feels so out of depth like he’s in the ocean and Blaine is swimming too fast for him, or maybe he’s not swimming at all and the tide is just pulling them apart, “You can take a nap before we eat.”

“No, I mean, I,” Blaine pauses, squeezing his eyes shut, “That’s okay, I can make it through lunch.”

***

The thing is, when it really gets to eating, he doesn’t know if he can. Everything looks so fresh and bright and he feels off-balance like he might just topple over. Especially when Burt goes to shake his hand and has to swap quickly, and when he hugs Carole it’s awkward and weak. He misses feeling comfortable and he misses people acting comfortable around him. 

“What’s up dude?” Finn asks, with the same words he always does, but with a tone like Kurt is poking him in the back. Kurt isn’t of course, he is stood right behind Blaine, one hand warm on his back, “This barbeque, I’m telling you man.”

“Oh cool,” Blaine feels himself respond, “Um can I help with anything?” he hopes his voice doesn’t sound as weak as it feels against his tongue. 

“Oh no Blaine sweetie, you sit down,” Carole replies, pulling out a chair for him. He gives in and falls into it, tugging his hand across his stomach and holding it tightly. Kurt stands next to him, like his guard. 

“You can sit, Kurt,” Blaine tells him, hoping he sounds kind still.

“I just want to be near you,” Kurt says, softly, touching a hand to the soft hair at the base of his neck and rubbing gently. Blaine closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. He feels like he is walking on eggshells and stumbling, all of them are. 

“Sit on my lap,” he orders, when he opens his eyes.

Kurt looks shocked and drops his hand to his side, his eyes unblinking, his mouth stutters a moment before he can form an answer, “Blaine I can’t, you just…”

“Your parents won’t mind,” Blaine almost whines, knowing that the just had meant something else entirely. Kurt trying not to hurt him when that’s all Blaine wants. He wants to feel the crush of Kurt all around him, remind him that they were made to crush each other until they are one mess, one heart, inescapably. 

“It’s not that,” Kurt says weakly, “You just got out of hospital, Blaine, I might hurt you, I can’t…”

“Please,” he utters, gripping the flesh of his side tightly, trying to feel what he used to feel with two arms wrapped around him, he needs to feel blanketed, safe but he can’t not when Kurt won’t touch him properly. 

“No,” comes the sharp reply, “No, Blaine.”

“I’m going to bed,” Blaine tells him blankly, getting to his feet, he feels the tangle of Kurt’s fingers between his own and what sounds like a whimper of closed off tears. He won’t look, he can’t, “Can you tell me where, please?”

“Second door on the right upstairs,” Kurt tells him, squeezing the pleads he tries to cancel out of his voice into his hand, “I can come with you,” he starts, “Show you where…”

“I can find it Kurt,” he interrupts too sharply, “I haven’t lost my mind you know. I’m not broken. And that’s what you said so please say what you mean or say nothing at all. I’m sick of you holding back. We’re equals remember? We hurt each other, we get angry at each other, and we love each other properly and fully, always, no matter what has happened before. So don’t come and show me anything until you can do that again.” His voice shatters halfway through but he carries on, despite how the broken sounds that Kurt tries to hold back cut like shards into him. 

He feels the stares of the others on his back as he enters the house and he knows he has broken everything again. Knows he has destroyed something that was only the best they knew how to give. They will never love him like he needs again and he knows that. So why won’t they just stop trying. Everything would be so much easier if everyone else stops acting like it was all okay. It’s never ever going to be okay again. 

***

Back in the garden the silence is broken by Finn’s cursing, his fingers singed on the barbeque. Kurt lets out a sob finally and Carole rushes at him, tugging him tightly against her chest. He clings to her the way he had wanted to cling to Blaine. He had wanted to dive straight back into him, press rough kisses into his skin, bruise his fingers into him and hold him like there would be no way back. 

But Kurt cannot do that. He just can’t yet. Not when Blaine doesn’t seem to be coping at all. Not when all he can think about is that shark. He knows Blaine must be thinking about it too. How could he not be? And how could he really be thinking straight after that kind of trauma. No, Blaine needs someone to care for him now. All the rest, later, there is always later. 

But lying still in his bed later that night, Kurt can’t help but feel the crawling sensation of loneliness; how Blaine had refused to even look at him. He had hurt him, in his best attempt to make sure he was never hurt again. And he can’t sleep. He can’t sleep because no one, not even Carole, had been able to give him the words of comfort he needed. The words of comfort only Blaine could give. 

And he was right next door. Just like he had been all that time at Dalton when they had annoyed their roommates by tapping out wordless conversation through the wall.   
He turns to face the wall, pressing his cheek against it and listening. There is nothing. 

He takes a deep breath and taps out a melody. 

I. Am. Sorry. I. Just. Don’t. Know. How. To. Do. This. Right. 

There is long pause and for a terrible minute, he thinks Blaine is ignoring him. Then a tentative response. 

I. Just. Miss. You. I. Need. 

The tapping stops. 

Can. I. Come. In? 

The tapping returns a minute later, this time closer, through the wooden panelling of the door. 

“Please,” Kurt utters softly, waiting for the soft squeak of the door and the pad of covered feet. Blaine always did like to wear socks in bed, especially when he was upset, he said it felt like being tucked in. In his old blue pajamas, Blaine looks quiet and nervous. He clutches the empty sleeve against his chest, and his shoulders jolt like he needs to be holding something else. Kurt shuffles to sit up, patting the bed next to him, “Sit, please.” 

“I’m sorry,” Blaine starts as he awkwardly perches next to him, his toes scuffling at the floor as if he’s worried he can’t touch Kurt any more.

“We were both upset,” Kurt tells him, hoping that Blaine will reach for him again but he doesn’t, “I didn’t want to hurt you,” He looks at Blaine again but he’s turned away, staring at the door, he can see the little scratches at the back of his neck where he was thrown against the rocks, “And I know I did and I’m sorry too.” 

“I just want to be with you,” comes the half-broken reply. 

“You are with me,” Kurt breaks with him, giving in and reaching both for his hair and the soft cotton of his arm and gently easing Blaine back so he’s lying against him, curls tucked under his chin, hot weight against his chest. Blaine lets out a muffled squawk and then a couple of gasping breaths. Kurt lets him settle before continuing, “You are always with me, but I need you to understand that that means I was with you when you were close to dying, I was with you when I practically kidnapped Artie to get you to and I was with you when they wouldn’t let me at you in that waiting room. So I need you to understand that I was hurt and scared too and I need time too. And I know that sounds selfish but…”

“It’s not selfish, Kurt,” Blaine interrupts, softly, “I want you to be happy.” 

“I want us to be happy, but everything feels really tender and hard at the moment and I don’t want you to ever think I don’t love you the same,” Kurt starts, absentmindedly rubbing   
a hand across Blaine back, feeling the warm solid muscles, each indentation of surviving human existence, “Because I know I will always love you and that’s why, do you understand?”

He waits for Blaine’s retort, not knowing what to expect, anger or sad acceptance like in the car, but nothing comes. 

“Blaine?” he murmurs, carting fingers through his soft curls, tinkling a melody against his scalp. The reply is only the deep breathing of calm sleep. 

He is not angry, more relieved that this he can still give. He can still comfort with the touch of a hand, he can still calm Blaine into sleep. He is not broken either.


	7. Chapter 7

Blaine’s parents are due to arrive on the Saturday morning, which leaves two days of them dancing around each other; miss-stepping their own guilt and tripping into a whirlwind of ‘please I’m trying’. It’s never been quite so difficult before. They’ve had their moments of needing care but always one after the other like dominoes, not like this. 

Of course Carole tries to make it better, filling the cracks in their tired attempts at trying to love and care all at once without breaking anything. On the Friday she asks Blaine if he would mind going shopping with her, only she wanted to make a nice meal for his parents and she didn’t know their favourite. For once Blaine doesn’t complain that he doesn’t know either. 

Before Kurt can offer to join them, Burt is asking for his help on a truck that their new neighbour can’t seem to fix. It’s a simple procedure but a two man job, and Burt had offered his services. Kurt grudgingly agrees if only because the sweetness of his Father’s heart reminds him of all he is doing for Blaine. 

And so the tide of their love parts and folds.   
***  
The supermarket is new and poorly organised, so Blaine and Carole struggle to weave their way through the aisles. The bright light reminds him of hospital and he feels mildly nauseous.

“Alright,” Carole begins, parking the trolley in front of the vegetables, “This stuff is shitty to talk about when you’re thinking with your hands and mouth, so here’s the deal. We’re going to talk and shop. I’ll call out what I need and a question, you give me both, okay?” 

He nods, because there is something of Kurt’s fierceness in her, which shows him why Burt might have fallen for her, she is impossible to say no too. 

“It’s okay,” she says softly, but does not touch him. For this he is grateful, he feels like he’s made of glass, “Veg and an answer that’s all you need. One at a time.” 

He nods and again and looks pointedly at the stacks of vegetables, waiting until he has something in his hand to talk. 

“Okay, I need four leeks and how you are feeling,” Carole starts, rummaging through the already half-full shopping cart, so he doesn’t have to have eye-contact. 

The leeks are in the far corner but he is still close enough that he thinks she can hear him as he grabs four leeks and tucks them one by one under his elbow, “I feel weak and tired and I feel like I need to make things better but I know that is not possible.” He looks at her then, “I also knows you’re going to say that’s not my job. “

She reaches for the leeks then, slipping them into a plastic bag and he sees now that they must work together because this is no longer possible for him to complete alone; he can almost feel the slippery plastic between his fingers. 

“I understand,” she says, “and you are right but I won’t say it because you know,” she twists a knot into the top and places it at the top of the trolley, “Now, I need a packet of mushrooms and how you are sleeping.”

The mushrooms are easy to find and the weight of the packet stretches his fingers and it reminds him of the calming motion of stretching for a note across the piano, he can feel the motions in his movements now and is grateful that Carole knows how much he needs his hands distracted.

“Okay, I sleep in starts, but I do have nightmares, most I don’t remember except for the sweat and the fear.”   
***  
The problem is a simple case of corroded battery cables, which need replacement. Kurt knows this is something Burt could do in his sleep. So he simply waits for the questions, as he passes tools and drifts around his Father trying not to think too hard about Blaine. 

“Look kid, you’re smart enough to know I brought you here for something,” Burt starts, his hands busy in the car so Kurt doesn’t have to control the wince that crosses his face. 

“Mmm,” he replies, leaning back against the wood of the tool table, the old garage with its corrugated iron walls and old bicycles, reminds him of his Dad’s first garage where he used to run around waiting for his mother’s strong arms to scoop him up. If he closes his eyes he can almost feel it still. 

“Care to tell me why you’ve hardly touched a meal since you’ve been here and why the shadows beneath your eyes are days old?” his Dad starts, his head still stuck under the bonnet, until he’s twisted the new wires into place and he can slam it shut, “I know how to count days without sleep in a man’s face, Kurt, I’ve seen it in the mirror,” there is a pause where the memory begins again but they both stop it.

“Dad,” he replies, weakly, now that Burt is looking at him he tries to school his face but he knows the lines of his anxiety are deeper than that.

“Scratch that,” Burt sighs, wiping his oily hands on a cloth, “We all know why, I just want you to admit it.”

“Admit what Dad?” Kurt asks, knitting a pattern with his fingers against the table so he won’t have to think too hard. 

“That maybe what we’re doing isn’t enough,” comes the harsh answer.   
***  
The questions come easily after that, food, pain, problems with movement; he answers them all honestly and calmly, surprised at his words. Yes, food is hard to swallow, especially when watching it dance across Kurt’s plate. No, there is not much pain except the swallowing of medicine that highlight the yellow weakness of his body in small pellets. Yes, he feels unbalanced all the time, yes, there are things he’d never thought would be difficult but are, yes, the water of the shower feels heavier than usual, yes, Kurt is part of that imbalance. 

“Alright,” the solid voice continues, “I need a handful of tomatoes and whether you want to talk about it with me.” 

He is struck by the fact that he is asking what he wants and almost fumbles a tomato, having to jam his knees against the shelving to catch it. In the end he can only carry two and he feels ashamed. 

“No,” his quiet shame is, because he cannot be dishonest now; not when the spell of having to answer is broken. 

“Okay,” there is a slight change in her voice that makes him think this might be the last, she moves to pick up the vegetables he’s chosen in her arms, “Last one, sweetie, I’m going to weigh these and when I get back I need one onion and whether you think you need to talk to someone else.” 

She leaves and he tries to catch his breath as he walks towards the onions. He takes his time choosing the best for her so that at least one thing will be perfect. It feels solid in his hand and the dull ache in his forearm is enough to believe that he might have one more answer in him. 

There she is, returning with the weight of his worries in her arms, a colourful mismatch of something extremely important. 

“Well isn’t this healthy?” She smiles, placing them back in the trolley, “Have you got what I need?”

He passes her the onion and the lost weight makes his heart and throat race in the dry heat of fear. But the look in her eyes is solid and non-judgemental; just this and then they can go to check out and put everything away. Just this.   
***  
“What do you mean?” Kurt asks, his voice breaking like shattered glass.

“Carole thinks that both you and Blaine are showing signs that you’re not dealing to well, that maybe you might need outside help,” Burt starts, Kurt can see the echo of his own stress in his Father’s face and knows that their pain is shared if only because their love is inescapable. He looks so uncomfortable. 

“What kind of help?” he tries to calm himself but his fingers are practically twitching to run. 

“Maybe therapy, or a support group, whatever you’re more comfortable with,” Burt explains, reaching to pack away his tools so they’ll both be more comfortable. Kurt’s itching hands reach to help, “Back in Lima of course, because as you know we’re going back next week.” 

“I know, Dad,” his answer comes, slipping the last pieces in place and handing over the case, “I’ll think about it.”

“That’s great, Kiddo,” the whispered support arrives, “You know I think you’re brave as anything. But we all need a little something.”  
***  
Blaine answer is brief, squeezed out like an accordion.

“Yes,” is the hiss of air. And they are gone, gone, moving on.   
***  
The house is jittering with the fluttering of all the nervous hearts waiting for Blaine’s parents to arrive. Carole mutters to herself and she scatters ingredients across the kitchen, hoping that if she makes something beautiful perhaps everyone will forget the hurt. An hour before they are due to arrive Kurt joins her, Blaine’s unbearable skittishness battering him like a bruise, and only the weaving of fine food together, slicing and dicing and timing, is enough to calm into at least jolting fear. Blaine attempts to join Burt and Finn in watching the game, but the heat of the wet sun is dampening his skin and he can’t help but watch to itch. 

They arrive half an hour late, but nobody thinks to mention it. It is Finn who ushers them in, continuing a previous conversation with Burt and asking them about the football. Despite a slight raised eyebrow, Blaine’s Dad, who does not offer anyone the chance to call him Jonathon, does join them in front of the television. Mrs Anderson, who surprises them with a soft, ‘call me Dee’ and offers to make some fresh lemonade. 

Kurt watches as her tiny hands squeeze the lemons without even wincing and sprinkle a good hunk of sugar. He wonders if her painlessness, is due to heartlessness or control. 

“So, Dee,” Carole starts, which Kurt is thankful for; the shame of knowing nothing to say to the parents of a boy he’s been dating for years and will do so forever, “How was your journey?”

“Oh, you know,” she replies, her voice is quiet and sweet, but there is something behind it, “Jonathon complained the whole way but that’s just the way it is. We just had to come see our Blaine,” the corners of her eyes flush a little and she lets a wave of curly black hair fall over her embarrassed face, “You must think us awful for not coming sooner, but you must know it’s terribly difficult to get away, his work is awfully important,” she hides her face again, squeezing the lemons a little more viciously now, “that’s not to say Blaine isn’t important. It’s just Jonathon doesn’t see it that way, he’s got a bit of a one track mind, when he’s stuck on something, well, I suppose he and Blaine are quite alike in that way.”  
“Blaine’s not like that,” Kurt protests, fiercely. Behind the controlled unflinching face, this woman is weak and uncaring, too fragile to even love her son enough for it to be seen.   
“Oh sweetie, I haven’t heard him talk about anything other than you for the past year or so,” she starts, shifting so she faces him, there is a hint of maliciousness in her eyes and it makes Kurt uneasy, “If that isn’t one-track mindedness I don’t know what is.” 

His nerves have been jittering all day and he can’t control himself when he slams the knife onto the sideboard and excuses himself with a curt, “Don’t talk about what you clearly don’t understand,” and goes to join the boys.

They are not faring much better. Aside from the muffled sounds of the game, the room is silent. Jonathon Anderson is sat as far away from his son as humanly possible and Kurt slithers into the gap next to his boyfriend with a pointed glare at the man. 

“Hi,” he whispers.

“Is everything okay?” Blaine asks, quietly, feeling the burn of Kurt’s jumpy skin next to his. 

He nods, “Your mother’s making lemonade.” 

“It’s what she does when she doesn’t want to face something,” Blaine tells him, still facing the television, his hand slipping slyly between where their thighs are pressed together and rubbing a soothing thumb into the soft material of Kurt’s jeans, “It’s delicious.” 

For some reason, Dee Anderson’s lemon sweet criticism have lit a spark in him and he just wants to touch and be touched, hold and be held, he wants to press harsh kisses into Blaine’s scalp again, make those curls his instead of his mother’s.

“You’re delicious,” he hums against Blaine’s neck, “will you come upstairs with me?”

He watches as Blaine’s eyes dart around the room, his fingers skittering across the leg of Kurt’s jeans and he considers his options. There are so many reasons why not. His father’s muted gaze. Burt and Finn’s desperately kind attempts at friendliness. His Mother in the kitchen. Everyone. All together. But the least together they’ve been. And then there’s Kurt right beside him, asking him to be with him in a way he hasn’t in weeks and he can feel it in his very bones. The heat of Kurt.

“Yes,” he hisses, “Yes, yes, yes.”


	8. Chapter 8

They tremble together as the weave their fingers and hands around each other, tugging knots into their hearts as they stumble up the stairs. Kurt’s room is closest and Blaine is grateful because the mess of bandage reminders would be enough to choke him in the blue room he has been given. Kurt’s room is a knocking one, for patterns through the wall and timid comforts. 

There is nothing timid in them now. There is nothing timid in the way Kurt practically scratches Blaine’s shirt over his head, snatching at the side they both ignore. There is nothing timid in the way they kiss, bruising air back and forth, their hot breath like joint smoke, easing them back into the hallucination of the past. There is nothing timid in the way that Blaine licks at his chin, bites at his jaw and makes it his again. There is nothing timid in the way Kurt whips his own shirt away, thankful for the lack of buttons, and finally, finally, crushes their chests together like they are two cogs viciously winding together.

The timidness lies in the darting fingers and flickering eyes. Kurt’s eyes blotting out the still red scars from the perfect gold of Blaine’s skin. Blaine’s fingers desperately grappling at a belt, slipping and wavering; breaking away from the hot brand Kurt’s is pressing against his neck.

“I’ve got it,” Kurt whispers, licking a fresh kiss against the salt of his nerves and then the ragged beat of his heart. The belts snap open one by one, wilting at their sides and then there are buttons and zips that make Blaine grip his fingers into Kurt’s bicep, pressing his own brand of fingertips. 

“Kurt,” he whines, as they stumble to shake away their pants leaving boxers and socks like boys again. He feels like a boy again. 

“I’ve got it,” Comes the murmur again, and they’re close, close, close; tripping backwards and the weight of Kurt’s body against his own is the breaking of his held breath, leaving a wave of goosebumps down Kurt’s arms. 

Kurt is scrambling for the pieces of Blaine he knows, the little blemishes on his right shoulder, where he drops like a butterfly and flutters away from the red lines. The smell of his skin, fresh sweat that tastes like something beautifully forbidden. The brush of Blaine’s artist’s eyelashes that paint love into the skin of his face. And the warm press of cotton lift them together, in the dirty reminder that Blaine is still his Blaine, still wants him, still arches his back to get closer, still whines and whispers his lips pursed. 

His thumb and little finger work together to hook their underwear together and down until there is nothing but their heartbeats jolting together between them. Their hair rubs together, and they slip their thighs apart until the soft flesh is surging together. For Blaine is the ocean and Kurt is the sand and the heat of their sun-love is blinding him.   
But out of the waves the whispers of his name grows stronger and more persistent, there is something like panic in the conch-like whispers of the ocean in his ear. 

“Kurt,” it comes again, louder and he has to stop because that is the voice that brings his sweat cold, “I can’t reach, please,” The paintbrush eyelashes are wet against his cheek.   
Blaine’s arm is battering against his waist and slipping between the cracks between their bodies but this is the arm that always held him. Kurt knows Blaine’s left from his right by the sharp white scar across the knuckles of his right hand, that white scar, always brought them into the white heat of pleasure, always. The empty hand held his neck, his back and sometimes the dimple of his lower back but now it is scratching for something new. 

“I can’t,” Blaine starts again, and the heat of their chests together is suddenly too much. Kurt pushes up on his arms so he can finally look at Blaine’s whole face. It is flushed in concentration but something breaks in it as Kurt leans over him, “I feel like the board,” he whispers and Kurt almost doesn’t notice except for the soft twitch of Blaine’s lips.

“What?” he whispers back, raising his voice he knows will crack something he might not be able to repair.

“You look like you’re about to stand up,” Blaine explains, His hand finding purchase on the thin skin of Kurt’s ribs, “Like on a surfboard,” he ducks his chest, and his breath catches, “I’m sorry, I can’t feel myself, I feel a bit crushed.”

“Oh,” Kurt replies softly, tipping himself to the side. There is something more than this he knows, the Blaine he knew would roll them back and forth like waves crashing until he would worry for the safety of the bed, he had always wanted them to crush each other one by one until they were one being. But this is something more, and he makes no attempt to pull Blaine on top of him as he settles by his side facing the ceiling. 

“I didn’t mean to…” Blaine starts and the cracking begins, he feels a tentative hand twist their fingers together but it is suddenly cold. 

“I know,” Kurt answers, because there is not much else but the reminder that both their hearts are still beating a rhythm into the same bed sheets. He is cold and flaccid and he thinks Blaine must be too. 

The sudden reminder of their parents downstairs is stark and even more uncomfortable than the steading rush of cold air from the ceiling fan across their skin. 

“We should get dressed,” Kurt says, and there’s a cracking in him too.

“I know.” Comes the reply and the only words after is the broken plea for help as Blaine struggles to button his own pants, the skin of his knuckles turning white in pain.

“I’ve got it,” Kurt says again, reaching for him and then around him, tugging him tight into his chest with the weight of his hands pressing Blaine close, trying to spread his wide hands across the span of his back in a hopeless attempt at comfort. They press their faces into each other’s neck and at last, like the creeping of a tide on a mill-pond day, Blaine’s palm is pressed against the skin over his spine, and his gentle fingers are rubbing circles into his hair and they are at home at least and he can’t help but tell him, “Everything’s going to be okay.” 

“I know,” is Blaine’s last kiss, wet and precious against his own lips and painting his own comforting words against Kurt’s cheek. 

The call for dinner is a sucking breath, their chests bumping together and their hearts pounding like their feet down the stairs. Their faces must show nothing. Nothing too wrong and nothing too right. 

***

“Hi boys,” Carole calls, poking her head out of the kitchen door and watching them scuffle down the last few steps, hands entwined, “Where have you been, huh?” 

Kurt looks to Blaine, but something in the tremble of his fingertips tells him Blaine won’t be able to speak, “Something in one of the adverts reminded Blaine of…” he starts, feeling terrible for using what is breaking them apart to cover up their mistakes, Blaine squeezes his fingers in a forgiven reply, “so we went upstairs to just sit and talk, I know it’s anti-social with Blaine’s parents…”

“Of course, sweeties, you have to do what you think,” she tells them kindly, spinning back into the kitchen. Kurt feels even more terrible that she had been so forgiving and almost turns back up the stairs in embarrassment. 

“It’s okay,” Blaine’s hot breath rushes against his ear.

And they take it on together. 

***

Blaine distracts himself by picking out each of the vegetables he’d held in his hand, when Carole had given him the gift of questions. His parent’s do no such thing now. The conversation is held merely by Carole and Burt’s pleasantries, teasing out words from the pursed lips of people with better things to do.

“Blaine,” his mother interrupts on of Carole’s weaker attempts. Her voice is sickly and he remembers how it used to seep into his dreams like sticky syrup, “We’d like for you to come home with us tonight.”

There it is, running down the back of his throat, drowning his words. His attempt at an answer is only gargling noise.

“We think it’d be better if the boys stayed together,” Burt says for him, his words are persistent and sure. There is a moment of hope that they both must feel, Kurt squeezes it into the flesh of his thigh. 

“Well,” the gritty sand of his father’s voice comes, and he counts desperately the vegetables on his plate as the grit of it reaches his eyes, “no offense, but we think he should be with his family.” 

“Well, no offense to you,” Burt snarks back, his voice is gruff also, but it buffers his skin and makes him feel a little cleaner, “But Kurt is the love of his life and now is certainly not the time for them to be separated, when they’ve looked after each other for weeks now.”

“Blaine is eighteen years old,” gritting, sanding down his heart into ragged pieces, “That is a title you earn and you have to live first.”

“These boys have done more living in the past few years than you have in your entire life,” Burt replies, crashing his fist against the side of his plate and jolting the whole table. 

Blaine’s Father grinds his teeth and wipes a napkin silently over his mouth. His Mother’s smile turns sour and she twists her fingers together, her bracelets clinking together as her hands shake. Carole takes a breath and starts clearing the plates, pushing Finn until he joins her, fumbling with slippery porcelain. Burt just breathes. 

Kurt seems to have stopped breathing beside him, and the fingers against Blaine’s thigh whisper away. They turn to face each other at once and Blaine watches and Kurt tries to hide the crumbling erosion of his poker-face. There is a waterfall breaking in that magnificent cliff-face.

“It’s okay, I promise,” Blaine starts, his voice is starched with syrup and gritty sands and the words don’t feel his own. He grapples for Kurt’s hands under the table so he can tell him with the music of his fingers, “I promise I won’t leave you, Kurt, I swear they’ll have to drag me away from you.” 

“I can’t have you locked in some room again where I can’t get to you,” comes the waterfall’s reply. 

Finn’s large hands come in front of them to take their plates and knocking against Blaine’s shoulder, he reaches forward to try and catch the plate that is tripping from his fingers. There is an almighty crash and suddenly the current of the waterfall is tumbling over the broken porcelain and running from the room. 

Almost running into Finn in the process, Blaine clumsily runs after him. The non-weight of his missing arm almost upturns him in that moment but he makes it out of the room and out in the garden where he knows Kurt will be. Kurt who likes the world to be at his fingertips, who likes to see that he could run forever, into the hot red of the summer sunset. 

He sees the shaking shoulders first, the long line of the neck where his fingers find a home. He knows it is the lock to Kurt’s thoughts and he doesn’t know if that’s what he wants. Instead he wraps an arm around Kurt’s waist and rest his chin upon his shuddering shoulders. 

“For a second there I was back in that waiting room,” Kurt’s lilting voice, like rain-fall, starts, “And I know I can’t do that again, I just can’t.”

“I know,” his chin bumps his words into the damp cotton of Kurt’s shirt, “and you won’t, I promise, they can’t make me go anywhere.”

“But I don’t want you to have to always be with me because I can’t deal with not seeing you face. That’s not fair.” 

Blaine feels the sunset of a conversation just like he’d felt the sunset of their intimacy earlier in that room.

“I want to be with you always and always,” he presses, like a kiss to Kurt’s ear. 

And in the red- orange light of ending he is so beautiful, he is reminder of the waterfall dreams that flood his nights; the blue eyes through the glass and a slow tide crashing at the surface.

“It was you,” Blaine tells him, “It was you I woke up for; I saw your eyes.”

There they are now, the ocean of his love, the ocean of his life.


	9. Chapter 9

The compromise is Blaine stays with his family until graduation; that’s Tuesday, since they both missed the last week of school; so they only have to suffer through two days apart.   
But Blaine’s skin feel itchier than ever, and the scattered sleep makes him want to scratch at his mind as well. He keeps thinking about Carole’s suggestion. It is terrifying to think of needing help, even the whispered “I’ve got it,” from Kurt, had been enough for the little twinges of embarrassment that had been at him all week to take control. Could he bear to have another offer their hands out to him? Perhaps a support group would be better, then he could be helping other people as well. 

He feels scattered enough with only the sound of Kurt’s voice down the phone to remind him that he is one whole piece, and the tugging and scraping of his Mother’s attempts will not destroy him. 

The issue lies with Graduation. The bright red gown was already folded on the end of his bed when he returned home, but had yet to try it on. Since it was summer he had yet to deal with sleeves, and the thought of such a prominent emptiness, such an obvious highlighting of his loss; it couldn’t bear thinking about. 

So he waits for Kurt, the coiffed top of his hair as he slips out of the car, an hour before so they can get ready together. Blaine is still in his pajamas, a tank top and boxers for the summer heat. 

“Hi,” is sudden at his doorway, with that quiet little squeak from when he snuck out all those times, “I was going to ask if you were ready but…”

“You’ll chose something better than me,” Blaine suggests, but the lump in his throat is not about the clothes hanging in his closet. 

“Ooh, okay,” Kurt giggles lightly, rushing at his closet and opening it, the brightness of his clothes make Blaine’s eyes sting; he can’t believe that used to be such a part of him, he’ll never tie a bowtie again, “Well red is bright enough so I think we’ll go with something a little more subtle hmm?” Kurt suggests, not turning around. Blaine watches as he plays the keys of his clothing like a piano, “here we go…” Kurt finally turns around, a white polo and a pair of grey slacks. It is blessedly muted, “Do you need any help?” Kurt asks holding out the clothes like an offering. 

Instead of answering Blaine begins to dress himself. His skin prickles under Kurt’s watchful gaze, it feels intimate and terrifying. The truth is Blaine doesn’t feel that much like he’s in his own body any more. Like he’s been translated into the lopsided weak being that he can’t even use properly. 

“You’ve lost weight,” Kurt comments, as he’s attempting to twist the polo shirt over his head, “Here,” and then there are hands at his neck gently tugging and the soft skin of Kurt’s fingers rub across his stomach. He is extraordinarily close. Too close. 

“Can you grab me a pair of boxers?” Blaine chokes out.

“Mmhm,” and he pecks the sweetest kiss against Blaine’s nose and turns, “here,” he passes them over a second later, “Do you want me to wait outside?” 

“Kurt,” Blaine starts weakly, his eyes watering. He wants Kurt to stay forever and that hurts, but what hurts even more is that he needs him to stay. He been wearing pajamas for the last couple of days for a reason, and that’s that buckles are by far the most difficult, “I might need you,” he manages to get out.” 

“Okay, I’ll stay,” he replies, lightly, sitting back on the bed behind Blaine and watches the dip of his back as he slips into the new boxers and slacks, “Your ass still looks as great as ever if you’re worried,” he quips with a smirk as Blaine turns around, his flies open. 

“Thanks,” he gulps, gesturing to his fly, “Could you…?”

“I’ve got it,” and the fingers are there again, little pinkies brushing against the tightness of his stomach and the last press of cool metal against his skin as he finishes. But the hands are still there at his hips.

“Blaine?”

He looks down and those perfect eyes are still looking at him. 

“Blaine, I want you to know that whenever you’re ready, I will still want you just as much as I love you. And I will always wait for you but I don’t want you worrying about what has changed because you are still my beautiful Blaine. Okay?” 

The earnestness of Kurt’s expression breaks him, the way he can feel the warmth of him at his hips, the way his thumbs rub at his skin, like he could tear right through it. He takes two hauling breaths and nods, reaching for the Kurt’s face to hold in his palm like a prayer.

“I don’t know if I love myself so much anymore is all,” he tells the eyes, for to say it to all of Kurt would smash the words against his tongue.

“Do you still love me?” is the small answer.

“Always, of course, always and always,” he rushes out, pressing closer so Kurt’s arms are wrapped around his waist and ducking their heads together.

“Then everything else will fall where it will,” Kurt’s muffled voice presses against the skin of his neck, “Let’s go get graduated.” 

***

The gown flops down his side as predicted when he finally puts it on and sits down next to Artie right at the front of the line of chairs. He grabs the wrist of the empty sleeve and twists it around his own. 

“Hey, how’ve you been?” Artie asks. His own gown has been folded up his arms so he can still wheel his chair without the sleeves getting tangled. 

“Well I’m alive,” he murmurs. The rising sound of Figgins voice is dull and easy to block out. 

“Yeah it sort of feels that way huh?” Artie continues, “Like living is the only thing you woke up with left. Because every keeps saying ‘you’re alive that’s the main thing’. But there is so much more left.”

“Like what?” 

“You’re about to graduate, the world is your oyster, man!” he thumps his fist against Blaine’s good shoulder and he supposes it’s a sweet gesture but.

“I don’t think I could open an oyster shell if I tried right now.”

“Hey,” Artie tries a different tact, “Would you consider coming along to a meeting with some of my friends next week?”

Before he can answer Artie’s name is ringing out across the crowd and he is wheeling away. And then so is his name and he is stumbling up the stairs, conscious of the railing that he can do nothing but waft a sleeve at. It is stiflingly hot, at sweat is sticking his gown to the back of his neck. His hat slip against the gel of his forehead, he used to much this morning his slippery hand panicking. The hall seems to silently watch his dragging feet and his sagging sleeve as he finally reaches Figgins. He faces the crowd instead of the painted pity of his teacher’s faces. He finds Kurt in the sea of red, his hat off, his hair glinting in the sunlight. They exchange a small smile. 

“Congratulations on graduating William McKinley High School class of 2013, Blaine Anderson,” Figgins calls into the microphone, offering out a hand for him to shake. Blaine does so, knowing the quietness of the hall is not in boredom but in active eagerness. He is the “finally something happening” they have all been waiting for. 

“Thank you, sir,” Blaine replies quietly, not giving the audience the satisfaction of hearing. 

But Figgins is lifting his certificate over their shaking hands and following the tradition “shake and take” Blaine had perfected by five years old after winning the junior golf competitions and the Club. Now there is nothing there to take. Nothing in this world that you can practise enough that you will know forever. This is no like riding a bike. You can’t kid yourself that the world won’t keep turning without you. 

The heat of the cap and his melting gel fuzzes his sight a little and he yanks his hand away, snatches the certificate and trips back of the stage; as fast as he can without falling over that stupid red and all the stupid eyes looking at him, like they’d sold them out front as part of the display.

He is not a display. 

Outside the hall he rips the cap and gown off and throws them in the nearest dumpster. The pavement is steaming with heat but he sits down anyway, leaning against the boiling plastic of the dumpster, his knees up to his chest. He’s never felt so utterly out of control in his life.

He sits there until the crowds come out, watching litter drift across the back lot. Counting the birds that snatch for food and fly off again. Breathing waiting breaths and trying to hold back the watery part of him that wants to burst him open like a pipe. 

He lets out an echoing sob, the kind the knifed through a throat, that binds and heart and squeezes, the kind that jitters through your shaking skin.

His is still quaking when Kurt comes slamming through the back door, tearing off his cap and rushing at him. 

“I’m sorry, I came as soon as I got of stage, they wouldn’t let me past,” he crouches in front of Blaine and places a tentative hand against his shuddering shoulder, “Blaine, honey?” he can’t look up, not now, it would shatter him open, “What’s going on can you hear me, Blaine?” The panic is rising in Kurt’s voice now. 

It’s just that he can’t move now, his limbs feel heavy, his head and lips the heaviest of all. 

“I’m going to ring Artie,” Kurt voice tells him, the high tremble of it makes everything worse. He’s hurt Kurt again and it’s never going to stop because he can’t be perfect again. Not like he was before, not ever like that again. There’s no pretending now. 

“Please, no,” He manages, his throat is raw and torn and the voice that comes out isn’t his. 

“Okay,” the hand on his shoulder grips tighter and the voice is closer, “what do you want, what should I do?” 

“Go home,” he gets out.

“Alright I’ll call your parents,” Kurt tries, there is hurt in his voice but it is nothing to what pain there will be.   
“No, you, you go home,” his voice is calmer now and rigid. He refuses to raise his head. 

“I’m not leaving you,” but the hand is gone and he is.  
“I want you to.”

“Well, you’re not staying here, I’m not leaving until you do.”

Between his knees, Blaine can see Kurt’s feet, steadfast and unmoving.

“I don’t want to be with you right now,” he tries.

“Well let me call someone then. You can’t stay here.”

There is a moment of two breathings short and stuttering. Kurt’s feet shift a little. Another door slams and there’s movement inside. 

“Call Artie,” Blaine decides, “tell him yes. Then you can take me home. My home. Then I want you to go celebrate with your family.”

“Blaine,” that voice is enough to nearly break him but he won’t let it. Artie is part of who his is now and all those friends he talked about. He belongs with the broken people. Not with perfect Kurt whose music will never stop even in his memories.

“That’s what I want,” he tells him instead. 

“Okay.” 

And there is a phone ringing and a two hearts breaking like beautiful blowing glass, bursting.


	10. Chapter 10

Kurt goes home, feigning illness and spirals himself into his bed, biting sobs into his pillow. It wasn’t meant to be like this. It was supposed to be about retribution, standing up and showing everyone that everything is still possible. But Blaine won’t even talk to him, keeping secret, destroying himself from the inside. And he doesn’t know how to make it better. 

He’s woken by a phone ringing and he scrambles for it hoping it is Blaine. 

“Hey,” the tired voice at the other end says, it’s Sam. Unexpected Sam.

“Hi,” he replies.

“How’s Blaine?” the phone asks. 

“I don’t know.” 

There is a pause. 

“Okay, how are you?” it tries instead.

“I don’t know if that question is easier to answer.”   
Downstairs he can hear rough laughter and kicking metal. 

“Are you outside, Sam?” He asks. 

“Come downstairs,” is the reply. And now it is much clearer, faint harsh whispers and shuffling feet. How many of them are there down there? Who could possibly want to come to his house on Graduation Night?

Instead of arguing he throws on a sweater and a pair of loose shorts, it’s a cool summer night but he’s not planning on staying out long. Just long enough to work out what the hell is going on. 

He locks the door on the way out, grabbing his wallet, phone and keys before leaving. Sat on the grass outside his house are New Directions. The girls sitting in the grass, in short summer dresses made for parties and not late night interventions. The boys in dress shirts and shorts, holding cans of beer. Puck is sat in a deck chair he obviously stole from somewhere. 

They all stare at him.

“Care to explain?” he asks, crossing his arms. His knees feel exposed and his hair is a mess and he wishes he’d just stayed upstairs. 

“The Anti-Graduation,” Puck exclaims from his deck chair, his arms wide, a beer in both hands, “the standard party isn’t cool for anyone, so we want to hang with our main guys.” 

“Blaine isn’t here,” he huffs, tugging his arms closer. 

“Which is surprising, because now would be the time to get action am I right?” Puck winks. The others shuffle and smile. 

“Look we just want to be here for you and maybe distract you a little bit.” Mercedes says, sweetly from where she is leaning back against Tina’s chest, “You could use a little fun.” 

“Where’s Artie?” he asks, distracted by working out who’s missing. 

“He may or may not be picking up Blaine,” Mike admits.

“Look he just wants to be alone…” Kurt starts. 

“Nope,” Puck starts, standing and hooking an arm through Kurt’s nodding to Mercedes to do the same the other side. He sinks his heels into the dirt, but summer has turned the lawn to dust and they drag him forwards.

“Where are we going?” he asks, giving in. There’s not much more he hates than being unprepared for something. He likes his details sorted in a row. But here he is in a lounge sweater and an old pair of shorts that might well have been Finn’s at some point and his old rafting pumps from their family trips; and he can’t seem to find the energy to stay put. 

“You’ll see,” Is the only reply. 

****

“Look Artie, I said yes for another time, to meet your friends,” Blaine starts, staring out into the summer night behind Artie’s head, the way the soft moon is echoing a ghostliness around his neighbourhood. The stone steps are still a little warm underfoot and the evening humidity is sweating the cotton of his tank top to his chest, “I’m not going out tonight, I’m tired.”

“You won’t regret it,” Artie tells him, from where he is parked at the bottom of the steps, he had thrown stones at the door to get him to open it and then chastised him on his house’s lack of disability awareness.

And then he is rolling forward to knock at the step again. 

“You’ve just had a terrible day and I know you’re parents aren’t in, because their, what I imagine to be particularly enormous, car isn’t here. So what makes you think being alone is a good idea? Here’s the deal. I’m not leaving. You can either invite me in and deal with the consequences of your horrendous doorway, we can hang out here on the pavement, or you can join me and have a little bit of fun.” 

“Artie, I’m really not in the mood,” Blaine starts, despite the fact that as Artie knows, he feels incredibly guilty about his steps and the obnoxious whiteness that is his house and the general unsmiling nature of the neighbourhood. He feels like it is him who has made Artie uncomfortable. 

“Well tough titties,” Artie winks, knowing he’s caught him, “Because I’m not really in the mood to being hanging around here and since I can’t join you…” He wheels around so he’s facing the gate and then looks over his shoulder, “You coming?”

“I’m in my underwear,” he replies, looking down at his bare feet and skinny knees. 

“Well…” Artie rolls his eyes, “We haven’t got all night, go grab something.”

Blaine nods dumbly and scurries back in through the door, leaving it open out of some sort of   
politeness to Artie. 

“Hurry up, batman!” he hears calling after him. Oh yeah, that’s right, the only boxers he had left were the joke ones Sam bought him for his birthday, at least he thought they were a joke. Good thing his neighbours don’t enjoy human interaction. 

The all night mini putt putt golf place is closer to Blaine’s house so they all arrive at about the same time. The girl at the counter gives them a bored look but passes over enough clubs and balls for everyone. 

“Guys I literally have one arm,” Blaine calls out at someone tries to pass several to him at once, “Cut me some slack, what is going on?” 

“We’re playing mini golf duh?” Someone answers, he thinks it might be Santana, “Alright little bitches I’m gonna whoop your asses!” Yeah that’s definitely Santana. 

“Did you really think this through…” Someone else starts, and yes that’s Kurt. Kurt who he didn’t want to be with, Kurt who he thought if he could just avoid him everything would be ok, “I mean golf is a two handed game.”

“Yeah, but Blaine hates golf,” Sam replies over his head. 

It’s true, he supposes, golf was always something he associated with his Dad and his big friends with their big suits and their big jobs; who wore sweaters on hot days and called him Sport. Yes, he hates golf with a passion, he hates the rules, he hates how beautiful grassland has been destroyed to create these too green places. 

“I don’t get it,” Kurt replies.

“I do,” he finds himself saying, “I don’t have to play. I really don’t have to play ever again; but I can still count the numbers you guys can still have fun..” 

“Blaine, that’s silly, this whole evening is silly and rude and…” 

“Kurt,” he stops. They both stop. It seems that everyone has stopped. He can see Kurt clearly now, the flop of hair he only gets before bedtime, how he’s wearing shorts and his pale legs and glinting in the moonlight. His face is a picture of beautiful worry, “There is a lot of stuff I can’t control about this but like Sam says; if we’d come here before I wouldn’t have played. I can still choose not to play.”

“And you’re choosing…?” 

“I’m choosing to be here.” He surprises himself, “I’m choosing to not leave you all on the doorstep.” He looks at Artie then and watches as he pumps his fist into the air.

“Y’all are going to be watching my dust,” Artie shouts back grinning and wheeling towards the first round, “I’m so damn good at this.” 

****  
It turns out half of them aren’t playing, including Tina, Quinn and, surprisingly, Sam. They find a patch together under a tree and watch the mayhem. The last cans of beer are warming in the heat, but Sam slugs them back anyway.

“You can play you know,” Blaine tells him, when Sam squeezes the can into his fist and chucks it at the bin, missing it.

“I kind of planned this so we could chat,” Sam admits, not looking at him. He looks at the girls instead who have moved to another tree to leave them in peace it seems. 

“Master plan to get me alone huh?” Blaine continues. He’s a little startled; Sam’s ignored him for weeks and now they’re back to the same old little midnight meetings, like back earlier in the year, with both their families missing. 

They had something the same then, and Blaine’s not sure if having something the same is enough to counter balance the something so different. 

“I know I’ve not been the best friend I said I would be,” Sam replies, leaning back so his head knocks against the tree trunk, “I’ve been terrible I know.” 

“Not terrible, just not…” Blaine starts.

“There. I know,” Sam butts in. There’s a cheer in the distance, Blaine thinks it might be Kurt. He hopes it is, he hopes Kurt’s winning at something. 

“But we’re bros right?” Sam continues.

“Yeah, we’re bros,” He’s not watching anything except the roundness of the moon, how he remembers seeing it that night, the night before everything went wrong. Just the two of them calling out across the bay. The same moon as it was then. 

“So you doing okay?” 

“Yeah I’m okay,” is the only response he can think to give. 

“It was kind of weird you weren’t at Kurt’s is all.”

“Yeah, well,” Blaine takes a gulp of air and glances over to where Tina and Quinn are giggling together, plaiting each other’s hair and taking small sips of beer, “We needed some time apart.”

“Nah man, you guys, you’re a part of each other,” Sam tells him, closing his eyes and resting against the wood behind him, “You’re never apart from each other.” 

They pause to listen to the muffled shouts of the ongoing game, and the ruffling wind in the grass, creeping like the sunlight above the trees. Morning is coming and it cannot be stopped. The pinkish hue warps the skyline and the desperate moon is disappearing. The grass is damp beneath their legs. 

“I’m scared,” Blaine admits finally.

“Me too, man,” Sam replies, “Me too.”


	11. Chapter 11

They finish the night on Blaine’s doorstep again, the blush of the morning sun is trickling through the cracks in the gates and swallowing up the front yard in shadows. Blaine’s legs are damp from sitting in the dewy grass.

“Sleep for the morning, okay?” Artie tells him, “I’ll pick you up at three.”

He is too tired to disagree. The unturned covers of his bed are so inviting, even the bright light through his curtains cannot wake him. He falls asleep immediately, fully dressed with grass stains on the ass of his pants.

***

The rest of them continue walking, watching the pavements come alive: the early wakers on their runs. Dog walks. Paper runs. The yawning dressing gowned folk letting their dogs out. 

Eventually they split up going their separate paths home. Soon it is only Kurt, Finn, Rachel and Quinn left. After a guilty glance from Finn, Rachel and Finn split off from them, walking instead towards Rachel’s house. Kurt doesn’t mind. He had had plans to do the same tonight, had Blaine not been so goddamn confusing. 

“I thought you lived around Blaine’s,” Kurt comments when it is only Quinn and him left. Quinn has been subdued all evening. She doesn’t have that same need to make herself present like she used to, but she is there none the less.

“Yeah, my mum can’t exactly afford that part of town after the divorce and all,” she tells him. There is very little bitterness left in her voice and he wonders quite how she got to this point of such acceptance. 

“I’m sorry,” he says instead. 

“Yeah, you’re sorry, I’m sorry, everybody’s sorry,” she says, and there’s that sarcastic bite that always gave Kurt and her that connection. They always fought so hard to be brave, “funny how it’s never until you’ve been told that that you realise it’s never what you want to hear.” 

“I didn’t mean to…”

“I’m not blaming you, Kurt,” she explains as they turn down the next road, “God knows you’ve been through enough shit to last a lifetime. I think you, more than anyone else, know that it just isn’t fair. It isn’t fair at all.” 

“So what are you saying?” 

They’re turning another corner, coming into the more winding streets near their homes. Kurt doesn’t know when they’ll reach Quinn’s house, there isn’t one he can quite imagine her in. There is nothing of her bluntness in the redbrick monotony. 

“I’m not going to say sorry,” she says, and there’s that knife edge that leant against the throat of all her peers for so long, “I am going to say the world is a cruel cruel place and what happened to you and Blaine is just cruelty. I don’t know why people like you get chosen like this. I don’t know if that means that God is cruel or just not as powerful as we all think. Listen, I know you don’t believe.”

“I don’t, no,” Kurt agrees, slowly. 

“All I’m saying is I get it and you’re allowed to be angry. That’s what I needed last year. I needed someone to tell me I could be angry and not just feel guilty all the time,” She stops and under the lamplight she looks almost ethereal, “Be unapologetically angry.”

“What am I supposed to do with it?” he asks, there is a quaking in his bones again. 

“Do you want to come throw stones into my pond? It sometimes helps,” she offers. And this must be her house the unassuming redbrick of people lost in compromises. 

“I haven’t slept,” he reminds her.

“Are you going to?” she asks, turning towards the house and opening the gate. 

Kurt follows without answering. She sneaks around the side gate and unlocks it with the key hidden under a potted plant. The garden is small but there is a vegetable patch and a small patio with a bench and in the far corner, as promised, a pond. Perhaps it is the show of Quinn’s vulnerability, how she has overpowered it; the simple throwing of stones magical enough to make a given-up-skank into a soon-to-be-Yale-Student; but he wonders if maybe it will be enough for him. 

“I guess not,” he tells Quinn who is now waiting, her palms open, holding small pebbles; better than any empathy so far.

“I guess not,” she agrees and hands him one. 

The harsh plopping followed by the gentle ripple, settles the waves in his heart, if only for a moment. 

****

Blaine wakes at 2:30. Desperate for some coffee, he makes his way to the kitchen. Surprisingly his Mother is bent over the sink, viciously scrubbing at an old plate. 

“Hi, honey,” she greets him without turning around, “How was graduation?”

She doesn’t apologise for not turning up anymore, it is to be expected. 

“Yeah, it went,” he replies, non-committedly, “What are you doing?”  
“I put out a plate for the hedgehogs a couple of weeks ago and completely forgot about it,” she explains, scrubbing one more time before giving up and throwing it in the sink along with her gloves, “Silly me, huh? I never can finish what I started.” 

“I guess not,” he agrees, finally grabbing a coffee filter and getting to work, if he wants a shower he needs to be really quick and his Mum will definitely chat all day if she can get away with it, “Look Artie’s picking me up in twenty minutes so I really need to shower and dress.”

“Ooh, what’s this for?” she asks, not getting the hint, “Whatever it is I can drive you it’s no problem.”

“It’s okay; Artie’s Mum’s used to it,” he says, offhandedly, puffing cold air to cool the coffee, and inching towards the door. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She has her patent ‘hurt face’ on, the one she uses to manipulate her surroundings; but it doesn’t work on Blaine anymore, he’s just tired of her; “That I’m not used to looking after my own son? I took years off of work to look after Cooper and you when you were young; and you practically ruined my career, but do I ever complain? I drove you to school every day until you got embarrassed of me. You were the one who always wanted Cooper and not me. You’re the one who always goes to that Hummel family instead of us. Not us. This is all you Blaine.” 

“That Hummel family were there when I nearly died,” he hisses out, slamming down his mug of coffee on the counter, and glaring at her. 

“Only because they have enough time on their hands to follow along on a school trip with their kids,” she hisses back, just as violently. 

“That ‘school trip’ was one of the most important moments of my life,” he chokes out angrily, “Which you would know, if you ever listened to anything I had to say.”

He turns and leaves, stumbling up the stairs. Ignoring the steadily rising sounds of his Mother’s quaking voice, trembling the house to pieces with its wailing sound. He dresses quickly and silently, grabbing his phone and keys and, as an after-though, spare socks, boxers and a t-shirt. He doesn’t know if he can come back to this and hopefully Artie will be appreciative enough of his effort to interact with others, that he’ll do him a favour. 

Artie and his mom are already outside when he gets there. He apologises profusely and slides into the back seat, Artie winks at him and they’re on their way. 

****

Quinn and Kurt fall asleep lying in the shaded grass at the bottom of her garden, their heads against each other legs. At lunch time, Quinn’s mom sees them and shakes them gently, offering sweet lemonade and tuna sandwiches. They accept gratefully and shake in laughter when she leaves. 

“I guess we slept all morning huh?” Quinn says, sleepily, wiping the grit from her eyes and sipping her lemonade. 

“My Dad probably thinks I’m at Blaine’s,” Kurt says, thoughtfully and then he is reminded that he isn’t because Blaine doesn’t want him anymore. God, his heart just hurts.

“Want to talk about it?” Quinn offers, laying back in the grass. 

“Is it possible to fall out of love with someone as quickly as that?” he asks, his voice is weak but they don’t need it to be strong; it is quiet in Quinn’s backyard.

“Yes, but Blaine hasn’t,” Quinn tells him matter-of-factly, she has been nothing but unblinkingly honest all day but this might be a step to far in Kurt’s capacity for belief. 

“Then why does he….”

“Because he thinks he doesn’t deserve you,” She interrupts and there is a sharp darkness in her look now, one that reminds Kurt that she has been broken over and over by boys and men who thought that because she was pretty they could own her, “In fact he doesn’t really know what he deserves; because he sure as hell didn’t deserve that shark-bite right?” 

Kurt blanches at the memory but Quinn is unflinching in her thoughts. 

“Blaine believes in balance,” She expresses next, and somehow Kurt knows this. Blaine believed, more than anything that in the end good people got what they deserved.

“He’s been hurt before but got to Dalton because of it. He had that eye injury but that doesn’t count because he chose it,” Quinn continues. Her words hurt like finally finding the splinter that’s been hurting you and teasing it out. His skin feels vulnerable with the truth of her exposition. Quinn seems to have seen and known more of Blaine in a few glances than all the time they had together. Were they friends and he didn’t even know?

But she’s wrong on one thing. 

“He didn’t chose to get injured like that…”

 

“In his head he chose it.” She interrupts, sitting up so she’s looking straight at him, “like the baby, for the longest time, in my head, I chose it. But this, this doesn’t feel safe to him because why is he alive? Why is he armless? Why can’t he do anything the same way anymore?” 

The words hurt like they are coming from Blaine’s lips. Stark and so so obvious. He felt those things too. The anger and fear that Blaine would never be able to do all the things he wanted, that he would always be scared and hurting; they were part of Kurt too. 

“It hurts to do the things he used to because he can’t do them properly,” Quinn is unrelenting, she pushes, talking and talking and talking, “So guess what? He decides not to do them. Including you. He doesn’t think he can be with you properly.” 

“I don’t care about his arm,” Kurt says because Quinn is looking at him and he doesn’t have any answers other than this. 

“It’s not about his arm, Kurt,” Quinn reminds him, kindly, and deep down he knows it, he knows it’s more than that, “it’s about a shift in the relationship.”

Quinn shifts so she is a little closer to him, blocking out the sunlight so her face is in shadow. She is sat crosslegged, cradling half a glass of lemonade. Her dress shifts against the grass. She is so honest and beautiful and Kurt wants to cry because she is doing this for him. He can’t remember the last time someone asked if he was okay first. The first is always Blaine. But Quinn knew, like his father had, that he was cracking apart. 

“Look,” she starts again softly, “We all know I was the queen bee in mine and Finn’s relationship; but when I got pregnant suddenly he had the power because I was trying to keep my secret safe and he had my secret,” The green of her eyes are the most expressive he’s ever seen them, and for a moment Kurt feels that she is truly kind. Truly selfless. 

“Blaine had the power when you first met,” she starts and he blinks, opening his mouth to interrupt. She holds a finger up to stop him and continue, “I’m not saying you guys were anywhere close to me and Finn but he saved you, you called him your hero,” Kurt blushes on remembering how he had been on first returning to McKinley. He had felt the flush of love so keenly then, so vibrantly; he couldn’t see past how precious it was to be with someone. To love and be loved. 

“He had the power because he was the first boy who wanted you right?” And there it is, Quinn’s truth, knocking at his heart, so he must open it and accept the truth of it. 

“It’s not power, it’s love,” he tries to fight back. 

“Love is power, Kurt,” She says, and there is that darkness again, that she is in the shadows, fighting, like him, in this world, where to love you must be brave and be broken.  
“But, it’s not like that anymore,” she reminds him, “You have to help him, you have to save him. It changes things, it’s scary.”

And so it is. 

“I’m scared too,” His heart is knocking at his throat, his eyes, bursting like the tear that are threatening. She has shown him a piece of her heart so he will show his in return. 

“Well maybe the best way forward then,” Quinn finishes, clasping her drink and finally taking a sip, “is to let him help you, while making him realise that you have to help each other, for love to be powerful enough to survive.”

The moment is softer now and the splinter is removed, leaving only the reminder of its presence and soft vulnerable skin.

“You’re really good at this Quinn,” he tells her; which doesn’t seem enough for what she has given him. He reaches for her bare knee and squeezes, she holds her hand over his. Their cool fingers tangling in the summer heat. 

“I’m hoping to do a psychology major,” She smiles, looking at the grass, “You have to be messed up yourself to be able to understand messed up people right?”

“Quinn,” he says her name so she will look up, she does and her eyes are twinkling with tears he hopes are at least a little happy, “You will be just fine, okay? We’re meant to be loved and when we are kind and patient and open, we find it. Blaine may not believe anymore. But I do.”

“So you’ll talk to him?” she asks, smiling through her tears.

“I’d be stupid to let that go wouldn’t I?” he smiles back and they wait together, watching the shadows creep back into the trees and rest in the roots of the garden. 

Above them the branches tangle together, holding hands as they do and waiting for each new moment like there is nothing but patience and nature and truth. For in this moment there is no horror, no pain; only soft shadows and bright light and the comfort that is the soft breathing of life.


	12. Chapter 12

They’re late so the room is already set up, a circle of chairs in the middle of the room; filled with kids who from what Blaine can tell, all have a certain level of disability.

“You didn’t tell me this was a support meeting,” He hisses at Artie as they move closer to the group.

“Where else am I going to meet a group of disabled people?” Artie replies, rolling his eyes and his wheelchair forward, “the metal of my wheelchair doesn’t like attract them or anything.” 

“I didn’t mean…” Blaine backtracks, flushing. He can feel the heated gaze of new eyes on his skin and it doesn’t feel the fresh heat of an audience.

“I know man,” Artie slaps his side and pushes him into the circle, “You don’t have to reveal your deepest secrets or anything, just listen.” 

He nods and takes a seat, following the gazes of these new faces, there’s seven of them, not including him or Artie and most are visibly disabled. A bald Chinese man with glasses rolls up in a wheelchair next to Blaine and nods kindly. His hands look rough with blisters and cuts from wheeling around all day. His hands and face are patched with white and it’s not something that Blaine’s ever seen before. 

“Vitiligo,” he says before Blaine can open his mouth, his voice is reedy and peaceful, “Not as uncommon as you think. Now, let’s begin shall we?” 

The group nods and claps, Blaine joins in, embarrassed. He can’t stop staring. All these people his mother used to tell him not to stare at on the street and now he is one of them. It doesn’t feel as bad as he thought.

“I’m Lee,” The man beside him begins, “Most of you know me I think, except this young man right here,” he turns and looks at Blaine, his mouth is soft and kind, almost childlike. 

“I’m Blaine,” he replies softly, hoping it is enough. 

“He’s a friend of mine from school,” Artie explains. 

“Well Blaine,” Lee continues, “We tend to go with a butt in when you want to speak type situation but if everyone today could introduce themselves to Blaine before the roll right on that would be super helpful. Alright?” He claps his hands together again, they make a strong drumlike sound and Blaine begins to think about the power of it. Lee cannot use his legs yet the strength of his arms is beyond that of most athletes. Why? Because he has to use them more. Perhaps, Blaine can find some strength somewhere else. 

“My parents let me join the golf club,” a lanky teenage boy, in a wheelchair across the room, starts; he grins as Lee coughs his attention, “Sorry, I’m Kai born and raised in this fine automobile. Legs crushed on my way out, you know how it is? Life’s a bitch.”

“Kai,” Lee starts, but there is a warmth in his warning.

“Right on. Life’s an unpleasant fellow,” Kai tries again, in a ridiculous British accent, tipping his baseball cap and winking in Blaine’s direction, “Anyways. Yeah, I’m in, so I can finally thrash those sweater wearing self-righteous young gentlemen,” he winks again, “Progress, as they say.” 

“Progress makes time tick on,” Lee reminds him, and they share a smirk which brings a warm stutter to Blaine’s chest that only loneliness in presence of great understanding can bring. 

“Right on, Lee,” Kai raises a fist and kisses it, “Oh yeah, before I forget, Ada you promised you’d speak this week. I did not give that cookie out of generosity.”

“Kai, come on, I have nothing to say,” a quiet voice comes from the corner. It is a waif of a girl, knees pulled up tight to her chest, trainers wedged under the arms of the seat.

“That wedge of a diary says otherwise, you’re up at bat,” Kai says, almost harshly, but there is a sweetness to his tone. 

“I’m Ada,” the girl starts, almost sarcastically, pointing her tongue out across the circle, “I’m eighteen years old, I should be dancing with the American Ballet but instead I’m stuck in this arse of a place.” 

“Why do you consider this place to be so terrible?” Lee interrupts.

Blaine watches as she curls deeper into herself, her feet and hands twitching. Her thin arms settle over her knees. 

“I should be on stage, I shouldn’t have to open my mouth for everyone to understand, I used to have that,” he voice cuts deeper across the room.

Blaine can’t help but think of NYADA and the wavering movement of his new self as he passes the mirror each morning, how singing makes the blood rise to his skin but the moment he catches a glance in the mirror it sinks again. 

“I used to have that. I used to move like love was in my body reaching to get out and now,” She sighs and rests her head against her knees, “I used to be proud of the mess of my feet. I used to be proud when they came out bleeding, when they hurt so bad I couldn’t walk upstairs to my bedroom. It meant I was working hard. But now, I can’t feel my toes anymore, I’m a wobbling clown.” 

Blaine’s eyes pulse, attempting to break the wave of understanding over his eyelashes and down his cheek; but he cannot cry when he is in a room of survivors. 

“I still think you can dance,” Another voice starts. It’s a small African-American kid, with big hair and big black glasses on, a cane rests next to his chair, “I can still play piano and I can’t see the keys. I just started using my hands more. Can’t feel your feet, start using something else more.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Ada mutters, “I’m never going to be a classical dancer.”

“Why be classical when you can be unique,” The boy answers shrugging. She doesn’t answer only buries further into her arms, “Anyway, I’m Davey, blind as a bat; they call me Davey Wonder because I can jam like Stevie.” 

“How do you begin to learn again, something you thought you knew?” Blaine surprises even himself by asking. The room turns to look at him, “Sorry,” he takes a gulp of air, feeling for his waist so he can hold himself in the right place, “Blaine, 18, shark attack in Hawaii, a month ago.” 

The room takes in a breath.

“Holy crapsticks, man.”

“Kai.”

“Seriously, Lee, did you know that? Because holy crap on a crapdog.” 

“Kai, let him ask the question.”

The room breathes out. 

“So, how do you begin when you thought you knew something inside out?” Blaine asks again, fixing his gaze on Davey, who he knows cannot see him. There is a little comfort in that.

“All that bull about learning to ride a bike?” Davey begins, twisting towards Blaine, so he can see how his fingers tap against the arm of his chair, constantly in motion, constantly remembering something, “Yeah, anything and everything can be forgotten. You just got to let your body figure it out. Stop fighting it because you think it’s wrong and feel. Okay?” 

“Okay,” Blaine replies, he shifts in his chair, letting his arm dangle. Somehow he still fits together, nothing else falls apart. 

“Anything else you want to ask, because some people have really dealt with these things for a long time,” Lee tells him. 

There is something else. Something he is desperate to know; how his life is awash with Kurt but he doesn’t know how to do it anymore, he doesn’t know if it is possible. 

“I think I lost my boyfriend,” He starts, waveringly. He feels Artie shift beside him but not say anything.

 

“Can you expand on that?” Lee prompts him, “You say, you think?”

“I don’t feel like he can love me anymore,” he says out loud for the first time. 

“Is he being a dick?” Another voice enters. She is two chairs away from him so he has to turn to face her. She is gorgeous, her tan face etched with scars and like him one arm missing. He can feel a lump in his throat, “because he’s not worth that.”

“Actually he’s being lovely, almost too lovely,” he explains.

“Alright, gotcha, guilty conscious,” She shrugs and sits back in her chair, “You still love him?” 

“Of course.”

“He still love you?”

“Yes,” he tries to start again, tries to explains but instead he huffs out, “But it’s complicated.”

“It isn’t love if it isn’t, sweetcheeks, and it’s certainly isn’t worth it if it isn’t,” She watches him, twirling a piece of hair between her fingers absentmindedly, “The love is there, the rest will fall into place, I promise.”

“How do you know?” He asks quietly, embarrassed at the childlikeness of his voice.

“See this?” She points at her scars, he nods and ducks his head.

“You can look it’s alright. Car crash, 3am, both of us off our faces. My boyfriend just stops suddenly. Car up our ass, unbelievable at that time of night right? His airbag works, mine fails. Arm goes through the windshield. Glass everywhere. I mean, that’s what I’m told because I don’t remember a damn thing.” 

She pauses for a moment, watching the memories pass across Blaine face like dust. There is so much familiarity in her words.

“And of course he blames himself. I mean he calls the cops and they take him into custody. Of course I don’t press charges. I mean we were both stupid but he was so sweet and kind and lovely those first few months because he felt so terrible.

“You know what I told him, when I finally got angry? ‘Shut up and stop it, I want you to love me and hate me again. I want you to piss me off so I can tell you you’re stupid and kiss you until we don’t remember why. I want to feel unbreakable again.’”

“And I’m telling you,” She looks Blaine directly in the eye and winks, “That was a hell of an evening.”

***

After the session there are drinks and snacks like a tea party. Blaine can feel the thrum of his own blood against his skin. 

“Is your phone off, man?” Artie asks, his phone in hand.

“Yeah,” he admits. He hadn’t wanted to hear from his mother, or anyone else really.

“It’s Kurt,” Artie hands him the phone and Blaine almost drops it scrambling for it. 

“Hi,” His breathes out.

“Listen, Blaine, I know you don’t want to talk,” Kurt hurries out, he sounds out of breath. It makes Blaine flush.

 

“I’ve got to say something, but I don’t know how it will come out,” he replies, almost as quickly. He lowers his voice and finds himself a corner to stand in. He doesn’t want anyone else to hear this. 

“Okay,” Kurt says. 

“I want to feel like I’m unbreakable again,” He says slowly, choosing his words carefully. His face reddens even without an audience, “Invincible. Like we were at the beginning. That’s what our love used to feel like remember. I want to feel that again. That invincibility that let you walk back on that stage at prom. That invincibility that let me jump into that slushie. That invincibility that made us brave enough to love each other despite everything. That’s what I want, and I don’t care if we hurt each other because we will and we’ll cry and break and then we’ll put each other back together.”

He pauses and waits for Kurt’s reply, squeezing his eyes shut.

“Blaine,” Kurt starts, his voice is strong but there is a quiver of energy beneath it like he too can’t bear to breathe just yet, “I’m outside. I’m outside the hall and I’d like if you could come outside.”

“Okay.”

“I want to come to your house.” 

He just breathes down the phone for a second and then rushes back to Artie, almost dumping his phone in his lap. He scrambles out a goodbye and then hurries down the stairs. He almost trips at first but by the third floor his legs feel strong again, as the heat of something real bursting at his skin rushes through him. 

Kurt is there, in the sun light, still and waiting; turning to face him but this time he is on the stairs and Kurt is there, all around him. 

“Hi.”

A harsh kiss is pressed against his lips, suddenly and invincibly and he has to push back so he doesn’t fall over. 

“No stopping,” Blaine hisses out and they reach for a breath together.

“Not unless you want to,” Kurt smiles reaching for another kiss.

“I’ve got you,” is the reply and they are winding together, tripping towards Kurt’s car. The heat of fingers pressing together is enough, for now. That and the little smile right on the corner of Kurt’s mouth that is just his.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: // here come the sexy times, like not that sexy but like not not sexy. you get me?

Kurt is out of his shirt before his back even hits Blaine’s bedroom door. He lets Blaine at his neck, flicking his tongue against the hot stretch of his skin, his teeth tugging a little at the white flesh beneath his ear; while Kurt tangles his fingers in the bottom of Blaine’s shirt and presses his hot fingers against Blaine’s hips. 

“What do you want?” Kurt hisses, pressing a quick heated kiss against Blaine’s hairline. 

“I want what you want,” Blaine murmurs back, because everything but the press of Kurt’s skin against his, is a blur. 

“Okay, stay there,” Kurt whispers, after a moment’s harsh breathing, then he is pulling back and grin, so his head is knocking against the door.

“I want you here,” and before Blaine can really take it in, it is his back against the door and Kurt hand twisting his above his head and engulfing his lips in that sweet mouth.

“Now stay here,” Kurt tells him their lips catching as he does so and then his lips are drifting lower against the skin of his jaw, his neck, and right there.

Kurt knows the moment when Blaine catches on, when his breath hitches and hitches until there is nothing left of it. Kurt keeps going. His free hand snatches at Blaine’s waist, clamping onto the firmness of his hip. His lips delve into the dip of the open buttons on his shirt and then he sinks into Blaine’s lush carpet, branding a hot mark into the left hip right as Blaine’s head and wrist hit the wood of the door rocking him forward.

With one hand still gripping a hip that shift forward and the other drifting loose circles around the button on Blaine’s shorts, he looks up to tell Blaine his plan, the one that had sparked in his mind as he taken those last breaths on the phone, “I’m going to show you just how beautiful you will always be to me, just how strong you are, just how kind, how giving, just how sexy,” he watches the soft tendrils of curls emerge around Blaine’s ears, the seeping of sweat against his forehead and the hot heat of his eyes as they burn into him.

“And in return you will show me just how delicate you are not, how fragile you are not; keep that arm up by your head,” he adds to the equation as he watches the fist clenching at his words, “no touching and keep with me as long as you can, we’re not anywhere near done. Does that sound good?” 

The strong masterlike tone he had been going for slips in the last moments and his desperation, his longing to do this right, quivers in the last notes. 

“Holy shit, Kurt,” comes the hissed out reply, followed by the thump of fist to forehead, “That’s sounds so good, Jesus Christ, yes.”

“Well if you insist,” Kurt smirks finally looking down so he can unpop the button, unzip the zip and get at Blaine as quickly as possible. He yanks the shorts down rather more aggressively than usual but it’s been so long. 

There’s a pause. 

“Are these batman boxers?” Kurt asks quietly.

“Yes?” Blaine replies, rather awkwardly, especially considering he hadn’t exactly planned on being hard and being in his lazy day underwear at the same time, or at least in the presence of Kurt. 

“You should have told me,” Kurt smirks, slipping his warm hand up the leg of them and inching up Blaine’s thigh, “I wouldn’t have put my Superman ones in the wash,” and the he is tugging at the hem and both boxers and shorts entangle themselves in Blaine’s ankles, he is tied to where he stands. That makes him flush more than he thought it would. 

He is distracted from that thought by the fresh kiss-path Kurt is making up his inner thigh, over his hipbone and deep into the flesh of his stomach. And then a little further under, right where Blaine was so hot it almost hurt.

“Kurt,” he breathes out, and they breathe in once together before Kurt is bending to suck him in. It doesn’t feel like home so much as the first time in a place with people you love that you know will become home. He’s not sure what feels different. 

Perhaps, it’s the unyielding way that Kurt moves around him, so different from their tentative attempts before. Perhaps it’s the way he is forced to wrap his hand deep into his hair so he won’t grab and Kurt’s face. Perhaps it’s the way that Kurt hadn’t asked him, hadn’t pushed for his opinion; he loved it when Kurt knew what he wanted and he loved it even more when they both wanted the same thing.

Kurt closes his eyes and listens to Blaine’s breath rushing in and out like waves catching on the sand and tugs him in closer, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of Blaine’s ass and swallowing deeply. 

Blaine almost crows in protest and the fist in his hair bangs back against the door again, “Kurt,” he whines, so Kurt does it again and hums happily, “Kurt,” Blaine starts again, squeezing his eyes shut, “Did you say something about not being done because if you don’t stop now…” He is cut off but he own wrecked throat, groaning. 

Kurt moves slowly, finishing with a swift kiss where he started, rewarding him with another beautiful groan, “I didn’t think you’d make it,” he remarks, gently wiping a hand across his mouth, “I almost didn’t want you to.”

“I didn’t know you liked it that much,” Blaine expresses, as much as he can behind his laboured breathing. He feels like he’s just resurfaced from a particularly brutal wave. For the first time in a while, it is a happily feeling, a feeling of utter euphoria. 

“Mm,” Kurt hums lifting himself off the floor so he can help Blaine step out of his shorts and then peel his polo back over his head, “I like you every which way,” he answers, licking a line from the middle of Blaine’s chest to the tip of his chin when his face is finally released. 

“Do I get to do something now?” Blaine asks, he is so frantically turned on that he can’t imagine that there would anything Kurt suggests that he would say no to but getting Kurt as naked as him might be a start. 

“You get to sit on the bed and watch me undress and then,” Kurt tilts his head and lets his eyes wander across Blaine’s body, slowly and thoughtfully, as if he were planning his next move, “I’ve been thinking since you kind of got freaked out when I was on top of you last time, I was wondering if we could try something new?” There’s that nervous tone again that makes Blaine smile. 

“Is that a proposition, Kurt Hummel?” he winks and moves his hand from above his head to the bottom of Kurt’s shirt and pulls until they are pressed tight together, both of them equally hard and thrumming with energy.

“Oh it most definitely is,” Kurt breathes out, yanking his own top over his head, and stumbling out of his pants, underwear and socks before he remembers that he had planned to make Blaine watch properly, to tease him until he was begging for it. But when he sees how Blaine’s wide eyes rake over his body and sweetly blink at him before pushing them both towards the bed, he just doesn’t care anymore.

All he cares about is Blaine.

“What were you thinking?” Blaine asks, his face and chest flushed and heaving. Somehow they’ve landed so Blaine is straddled on top of hip, his strong thighs curled around his hips, their cocks bobbing together, each haphazard brush and exhilarating as the last. It’s been so long. 

“Like this?” Kurt suggests, lifting his hips a little so they are jolted together. 

“Oh,” Blaine’s jaw drops open and Kurt watches as his eyes drift down to where he is sat and back up to the heat of Kurt’s eyes, “Oh, yes, definitely yes,” he rushes out before leaning over him completely to press and hot open kiss against Kurt’s mouth, “You won’t let me fall right?” He asks finally tentatively.

“I will keep hold of you just like this,” Kurt replies heatedly, surging up for another kiss and gripping Blaine’s hips tightly with both hands, “I’ve got you,” he pauses, “And you’ve got me.”

“Okay.” 

***

They lie quietly together until their sweat cools against each other’s skin. 

“Well that certainly was something new,” Blaine remarks from where his head is pressed against Kurt’s chest. Their fingers are lying entangled on Kurt’s hip and Kurt’s spare hand is weaving patterns into Blaine’s scalp. 

“Was that okay?” Kurt replies after a minute, his voice is scratched from overworking but he sounds more vulnerable than before, like he’d been ripped open, heart still galloping next to Blaine’s ear. 

“Kurt, come on,” Blaine rolls his eyes and flips onto his back so he can watch the ceiling and reach their hands up to press a kiss against the back of Kurt’s hand, “Everything was perfect.” 

“We still need to talk.” 

“I know.”  
But the peace of the harmony of the breathing keeps them still and silent.   
“Can you stay the night?” Blaine asks, after a moment. 

“Yeah, I can stay,” Kurt murmurs before tugging Blaine’s shoulder back around and into his embrace, their skin is cold but soft and lovely, “Even if you tell me to go.”  
“I won’t,” Blaine kisses into the soft part of Kurt’s neck and they are falling back again.


End file.
